


the choiceless hope in grief

by glimmerglanger



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Discussion of Alcohol Abuse, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spoilers, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 14:26:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18780106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: It seemed to Thor that if - if - the dead could be brought back by the power of the Infinity Stones then it proved that the land of the dead was not some shut-away place, as he had always been taught. A billion billion souls had returned from beyond the veil, after all. What was one more?Or, the one where Thor goes to Valhalla to get back someone he lost.





	the choiceless hope in grief

**Author's Note:**

> The only sane reaction to not particularly caring for time travel in a movie is to write a bunch of time travel fix it about that movie, right? Right.

_one_

Thor left Midgard behind without hesitation. After all, whatever hopes he’d harboured for his arrival on the planet had faded long ago and the thought of getting some distance appealed. He even told himself, the first day off-world, that he would not drink anymore, that he would take advantage of the fresh start.

That resolution lasted a few moments, just past the time Nebula interrupted his discussion with Quill regarding leadership to inform them both, “Rocket’s in charge. I’m second-in-command. Get out of the way.”

Rocket shrugged as they gaped, and said, “That’s what happens when you’re dead or dead drunk for five years. We’re going _here_.”

Thor had left to find quarters, then. It seemed foolish to stay and argue in the face of clear logic. And he’d found alcohol. Strong alcohol. He did not have to drink nearly so much to bring on the blackness. And the days were not completely empty, the way they’d been on Midgard.

There was something to fill more of the hours, fights that required _some_ measure of sobriety, though rarely the full span of it, which was for the best. Thor could still recall what it felt like to be sober, though he’d done his damnedest to ensure he never was for five years. 

He worked to avoid feeling even briefly sober and was successful, until they stumbled on a planet that had not responded well to the unexpected return of half the population.

They were too late to do anything about the battle, to do anything but offer some measure of aid to the survivors. Thor left the others to such tasks; they only counted on him to fight, anyway. He was still good at killing, despite all he had become and all he had lost. 

He wandered away from the huddled masses of survivors, out into the ruined city beyond. He wasn’t the leader, wasn’t fit even to lead a band of brigands. Someone else could sort out the care these poor bastards needed. He figured that he would find either something to drink, something to fight, or something to take to sell for drink. 

He found a dead man, instead. There were plenty of them around. He barely saw most of them. What were more of the dead to him? But this dead man caught his attention and held it, like a hook slid right into his throat. The man sprawled across the ground on one side, his back to Thor. He had dark hair. He wore green and black. 

Thor jerked forward, unbreathing, falling to his knees, rolling the man onto his back and it was--

It was just some stranger. Some man Thor had never seen alive, heavier set than Loki, older. Just as dead. As dead as Loki had seemed, last time Thor saw him, before the world turned into one nightmare moment after another. Thor blinked, terribly sobered by the sight, and pushed to his feet. He took a wobbling step back, then another, finally managed to turn, and made his way back to the _Benatar_.

He was well on the way to making certain he was truly drunk by the time the others returned. 

#

The others came back to the ship ready to talk. Perhaps the death toll weighed heavily on them. Thor was too far gone to rise from the chair and leave when they flooded into the _Benatar’s_ common area. He just sat, watching them come in grim-faced to settle around the room.

He’d had a drink earlier - or two, or three - of some new liquor that kept his thoughts distant for hours at a time, sometimes an entire day, all in one swallow. It threatened to rise up in his throat when Quill tossed down the cards he’d been half-heartedly playing with Drax and demanded, “Do you ever wonder why some people get to come back and some don’t?”

Nebula stared at him, her eyes dark as the void of space. “No.”

Thor believed her. She did not seem the sort to wonder such things. Still. He felt far enough away from sobriety to speak. “My people,” he said, the words ash in his mouth. His people. It was nothing but a foolish joke. They were no longer his, and better off for it. “They believed the dead could not return. None of them.”

“They can’t,” Nebula said, turning back to cleaning her favorite blaster. “Your people were right.”

“But they can,” Quill said, and Thor misliked having to agree with him. “They did. Trillions of them across the universe.” Hulk had brought back so many of the lost for everyone. Except Thor. His lost stayed dead.

“They were… erased,” Nebula said, jabbing at the firing device more fiercely than it surely deserved. “Not simply killed.”

“So they get to come back because Thanos killed them all special-like? What about all the other people he killed? They just stay dead, because he took them out too personally? What about--”

“Enough, Quill,” Rocket said, nudging Quill in the knee. “Now, we’re supposed to be focusing on this job. You guys remember that? Our actual work that we got to do?”

The conversation drifted back on track, but Thor barely followed it, his thoughts spiralling continually around to what Quill had said. Thanos had wiped out half of all the living things in the galaxy. Where had they gone, if not to the lands of the dead?

Where had they returned from, if not the lands of the dead?

It seemed to Thor that if - if - the dead could be brought back by the power of the Infinity Stones then it proved that the land of the dead was not some shut-away place, as he had always been taught. A billion billion souls had returned from beyond the veil.

He shook those thoughts aside. He had no way to reach the lands of the dead, to pry anyone from those distant shores. He was not even entirely certain Loki was dead, that the last five years had not been a cruel joke, so what did it matter? What did any of it matter, really, besides finding out where he might next find a drink?

#

Thor dreaded sleep and had for years. His dreams, when he was sober enough to dream, were terrible things that left him shaking, tangled in blankets that stank with his sweat and caught around his arms and legs.

He drank too little one night, and the dreams came for him, twisted images where he wandered around the empty halls of Asgard, calling for Mother, for Father, for Loki, knowing that they had to be there somewhere but unable to find them.

The dreams shifted locations, moving between the halls of the refugee ship and the homely streets of New Asgard. As the dream dragged on and his panic over being unable to find anyone increased, he always narrowed his search, until it was Loki he sought for, until he was in the quarters they had so briefly shared on the refugee ship, a small compartment that held no hiding places, tearing apart the walls and floors to find what he’d lost.

He woke with a start, biting back the sounds in his throat, tearing the sheets to free his arms and groping a hand out for the bottle he knew he’d left nearby.

He drank.

Or tried. The bottle held nothing but fumes. He dropped it, listening to it roll away, and pushed to his feet. There’d be more somewhere out in the _Benatar_. There always was. He stumbled out of his quarters and found what he sought in the currently empty common room. He sank down into a corner, seeing no reason to return to his quarters, not even when Nebula came into the common area and sat down to work. 

He liked her, or thought he did, with her sharp edges and fierce sadness. She brought questions to his mind, something no one else seemed to do any longer. He did not immediately get up to leave, watching her, instead, until she glared up and asked, “What?”

“You did not seem overly awed at the idea of traveling through time,” Thor said, because it was as far from the subject of his dream as he could imagine, taking another drink, and not for the enjoyment of it.

He did not remember the last time he’d eaten or drank anything for the joy of eating or drinking. Food tasted of nothing, these days. He’d thought it was just a product of living on Midgard, but even now, far from there, each bite sat on his tongue like ash. And the drink…

Well. He barely tasted it at all. It was only a means to an end, anyway. He would have drank it if it tasted like deep space freighter fuel, for the fuzzy emptiness it brought to his head, the ability to play the happy idiot, the bulwark that kept the fierce blackness in his chest over _there_ , that kept him from walking out of the emergency hatch and into nothingness. 

It took less drink to get there, now that he could access better brews. Sometimes he managed on one flask a day. It helped when he ate little. The stronger liquor burnt through his funds, but he cared little. He had nothing else to spend his share on.

Nebula glanced up at him, dark eyes unblinking. “Why should I have been?” she asked. “The humans are not the first to develop the technology. Though they arrived at the idea early in their technological development. They would never have managed it without the help they got.”

Thor nodded. They were a primitive folk. “You know others that have done it, then?” He picked at the peeling label on his bottle. It was strange to make conversation. He’d gotten out of practice in simply talking. Speaking with Nebula - even about something so pointless - was good practice. He took another drink.

Nebula made a small sound, a scoff. “Of course. I assume Thanos contacted one of the witches familiar with the craft to travel forward through time. He must have paid dearly to transport so many, for all the good it did him.” She smiled a little, small and vicious.

Thor hummed. His face and hands felt numb. His thoughts, though, still curled and twisted on one another. He asked, “Do you know where any of them are now? These witches?”

She stopped what she was doing, then, the electronic humming shutting off all at once. “I might,” she said. “Why?”

He stared at the ceiling, chasing the emptiness that swallowed his terrible memories. “Oh,” he said, taking another swallow, hissing at the burn, “no reason. Just making conversation.”

#

They got several jobs - good jobs, according to Rocket - in a row after that. The work ran them from one end of the galaxy to the other, pushing thoughts of witches and the dead out of Thor’s head. He even forgot to drink, sometimes, though the fierce ache in his head and the shake in his limbs reminded him soon enough.

He pulled his weight. He got his share. He thought of nothing else. The drink saw to that, until Rocket edged up to him one evening, picking at his fur. “What?” Thor asked, some wakening sense of dread moving in his gut even through the blurriness around the world. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing is _wrong_ , per se,” Rocket said, scrunching up his snout. “Not wrong, exactly.”

“I don’t believe you,” Thor told him, and Rocket rolled his eyes.

“Well, look at that,” he said, “you’re not a complete idiot. Look. Look, you remember how we found you? After your ship went all to pieces?” Thor’s gut froze to ice. He said nothing. His jaw wouldn’t unlock. “I can see by your face that you do. Well, that wreckage, it’s pretty valuable to a certain type and--”

“We will _not_ loot my people,” Thor snapped, full of a hot flare of anger that he’d thought he’d finally drowned.

“Oh, no, _we_ definitely won’t,” Rocket said. “But, see, we’re not the only outfit in the galaxy, and we got word that--hey, where are you going?”

#

“Tell them to leave it,” Thor snapped once he reached the bridge, tired of hearing Quill’s excuses for why the looting of his dead wasn’t really so bad, if you just looked at it from this specific angle.

“Look,” Quill said, “It doesn’t matter what I tell them, there’s a lot of scrappers out there. Sooner or later, someone is going to come for it.”

Fury scorched along Thor’s veins, aimed at the potential scrappers. Aimed at Thanos. Aimed mostly at himself. It all came down to his failures, after all. He said, “No.”

“Great.” Quill rolled his eyes. “‘No.’ Sure, what exactly do you want us to do with ‘no’?”

Thor clenched and unclenched his fists and his aching jaw. “Just--take me there,” he said, the dread in his chest growing and expanding. He did not want to go there, he’d never wanted to return to that accursed bit of space, where he lost all he had left in the galaxy. “Tell me when we get there.” He turned from the bridge, back to his room, to take one swallow of the foul, strong liquor and then another, to still the shaking in his hands.

It did not work. His fingers trembled still when Drax radioed from the bridge to let him know they had arrived. Thor scrubbed his hand across his mouth, took another swallow of liquor, and headed out.

#

The debris still floated loose in space, spreading out in a slow drift as the dissipated force of the explosion propelled it outward. Thor stared blindly through the front glass, taking in the ruined metal, the frozen fuel, the bodies. 

There were so many bodies.

Thor dug his fingernails up into his palms, looking at his people, abandoned to space, not given proper funerals while for years he had been on Midgard, drinking, eating, _hiding_. He started to turn aside, his chest aching, and froze as a piece of rubble moved, revealing a familiar form, stretched out, floating free in space, eyes open, hair a drifting, dark halo.

“Hey, whoa,” Rocket said, jerking away from the controls as sparks jumped from them. “How about you stop whatever the hell it is you’re doing there?”

“Stop the ship,” Thor said, abruptly and startlingly sober, as though the agony in his veins had dumped all of the comforting toxicity of the alcohol directly out of his body.

“What?” Rocket turned to look at him, squinting. “What are you - where are you going? Hey, stop!”

#

Thor went out to get the body. He was aware that the others talked to him. Their voices buzzed against his ears, unregarded. He knew they yelled. He knew Rocket grabbed the suit they used when stepping out into the void of space and tried to push it into his arms.

Thor ignored them all, closing the inner hatch of the rear exit and opening the outer hatch. He grabbed onto the rim as the atmosphere rushed out, trying to drag him along. The void burned against his skin, a pure, deep agony, but one he had lived through before. One he could live through again.

He pulled out of the hatchway, his lungs burning with terrible pain. The worst of the pain was in his remaining true eye. It felt like it might burst, a cost he was willing to pay as he scanned the empty wastes to where Loki floated, still and limp, through space.

Thor jumped towards him, still not thinking. He sailed through the burning nothing, cutting the power on his boots as he reached Loki. He looked… as he had when Thanos choked the life from him, open-eyed, staring at nothing, with livid marks around his neck. And Thor had believed, some part of him had _known_ , that Loki was only playing some cruel jape, faking his own death once more, _pretending_ , until that moment.

Thor reached out for him, gathering him up. He weighed nothing in the void of space. Thor pushed Loki’s head down against his shoulder, smoothing down his hair, closing his eyes at last, more than five years too late, and turning only then back to the ship.

He did not want to return, really. The void called to him. He could just… go. Into it. It was hard to say how far the rockets on his feet would take him, how long he could survive in the vacuum. Eventually he would die. He could die holding Loki. As he should have done, years ago.

But.

But, Loki deserved a proper burial. After all these years, he deserved that. So Thor went back into the ship, and waited for the seal to repressurize, holding Loki’s limp body. Gravity took him back into its hold. Air rushed around him and his lungs gulped it down, acting without his intention or permission.

The Guardians were gathered outside the inner hatch. Most of them. They yelled and cried out and then, when they saw Thor, abruptly went silent. He walked past them, carrying Loki’s body. He only realized he went to his quarters when he opened the door. But where else would he go?

He entered, hearing still the buzzing of their voices, and laid Loki out across his bed. “Jesus,” he heard Quill say, from far away, “this is a little morbid, right?”

“Shut up,” Nebula said, and Thor heard the door close.

He sank down to his knees beside the bed, folding up, falling forward. He pressed his face against Loki’s stomach, gripping one of Loki’s hands, and wept.

He hoped, even then, that Loki might stir to life, might laugh at him and mock. But he did not. He stayed cold and still as the grave. He had done it, really done it, and Thor had the proof now, in a way he could no longer deny, no matter how much he drank.

Thor wept, the way he had not wept after failing to kill Thanos, the way he had not wept after _killing_ Thanos, the way he had not wept for five years.

#

Thor felt scrapped out inside when his door opened again. He did not look up, or lift his head from the mattress. Someone passed behind his back, something that would have once made him jump and now meant nothing.

“Who was he?” Nebula asked, quiet.

Thor wished she would go away. He wished--

His wishes meant nothing. He swallowed. “My lover,” he said, because that seemed… the most accurate descriptor, the one she would understand the best for all that Loki had been to him.

“What happened to him?”

Thor almost laughed. It seemed fairly obvious what had happened. He stroked his thumb back and forth across Loki’s knuckles, back and forth, back and forth. “He--he had one of the Infinity Stones. Thanos came for it and killed - killed everyone but us. And he…” Thor had to stop for a moment, waiting for the pressure in his throat to pass. “He traded it. For my life.”

“I see,” Nebula said, and sounded like she did, her tone wavering in a way he had never heard from her before.

“And then,” Thor said, watching the scene play out in his memory, crystal clear and perfectly sharp. “And then he attacked Thanos with a knife.” The absurdity of that, of Loki trying to kill someone with a blade, with a frontal-attack, had given Thor the excuse he needed to believe it had all been a trick for years. “And Thanos killed him.”

“Then he saved your life twice,” Nebula said, some terrible surety in her voice. Thor rolled his head to the side, looking up at her through the ragged fall of his hair.

“What?” he asked.

She stared down at him, her dark eyes impassive. “You said Thanos killed all but the two of you,” she said, crossing her arms a little tighter over his chest. “Then he would never have allowed you both to live. It wouldn’t have been _balanced_.” She hissed the last word, turning her face aside.

“I’m sorry,” she said, walking stiffly past. He did not move to see her out. He did not do anything, but turn his face back against the sheets.

#

He did not want to leave the room. He did not want to leave his position, crouched, penitent, on the floor. But someone knocked at his door eventually and would not stop. Thor made himself rise, carefully placing Loki’s hands over his breastbone, ensuring his eyes remained closed, and turned only then to the door.

Mantis stood outside. Thor had never spent much time around her, as much from what remained of kindness within him as anything else. No one else deserved to feel the way he did, much less some woman who had, by all accounts, had enough hardship in her life already.

She held herself up against the doorframe, her head hanging down. Her heard her weeping, even as she stepped blindly forward, grabbing at him, pleading, “Stop! Please, please, you must, you must stop.”

Thor caught her; she seemed ready to collapse. She looked up at him, her dark eyes huge, tear tracks covering her face. “Please,” she said, “I cannot take it any longer, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Thor said. It would have been cruel to pretend he did not know what she spoke of. He would not have wished this grief in his chest on anyone. “I don’t know how.”

She looked stricken, for a moment, staring up at him with her mouth falling open, as though she could not conceive of a way to live with the battering of his emotions for even one more moment. Fresh tears welled in her eyes, and guilt bit at him deep, before Drax stepped through the door, sighing.

He said, “It’s alright, I know how,” and struck Thor across the jaw.

Thor forgot to turn his head, too stunned to remember the relative strength of those around him. Something snapped, wet, in Drax’s hand, and Drax swore, pulling his hand back. Thor stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Cradling my hand!” Drax barked, bending over slightly. Mantis swayed away from Thor, grabbing at Drax’s hand.

“Many of the bones are broken,” she said, Drax nodding along with her assessment as though he were not truly bothered by the injury.

Thor watched them leave. And then he closed the door, returned to his place by the bed, knelt, and bent over. Loki had not moved. He would never move again. He had saved Thor’s life, and Thor had left him to float in space for five years. Thor threaded their fingers together and wept once more.

#

“Where should we take you, for him?”

Thor turned his head on the blankets, blinking the crust away from his eyes. Rocket stood at the foot of Loki’s bed, his arms crossed and his face turned towards the door. Thor had not heard him enter. He had slept, somehow. Nightmares clung to his thoughts. “What?”

“You, uh, we want to take you wherever you need to go. To put him to rest. But we’re not sure where that is. You want to go back to Earth? Your people there?”

Thor stared at him. Rocket laid his ears back, taking a small step forward. “Thor, buddy, we’re not sure what to do here.” Thor wanted to close his eyes and die. He did not think that was what Rocket meant, even in his current state. “Just… where do you need to take him? Where is he supposed to go?”

Loki had not been supposed to go anywhere. He had _stayed_ , for the first time, right where Thor needed him to be. He had _stayed_ , and then Thanos had arrived, and none of this was supposed to be happening.

This was all supposed to be a joke that Loki left stretch too long. Thor had even been prepared to forgive him, had know that he would in an instant, too relieved to find that he yet lived to care about the previous years of grief.

But Loki only laid there.

Thor swallowed. “Do you not know someone who could help? For a fair price?”

Rocket grimaced, looking to the side. “Not for this,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Thor turned away from him, back to Loki. He did not yet smell. Perhaps he would not. Who knew how the Jotun decomposed? Thor shut his eyes against that thought. “Then yes,” he said. “Take us to Midgard.” It was as good a place as any to put him to rest.

#

Thor felt the change in the engines when the _Benatar_ landed, the cessation of movement translating up through his knees. He blinked. Midgard. They must have reached Midgard. He had thought, carefully, about what he must do when he reached the planet, so he remembered to stand, to wrap his sheet around Loki’s body, and to lift him.

His body had grown stiff, uncooperative. Thor stepped out into the hall, unsurprised to find it empty, all the way to the open ramp.

The only surprise came with Brunnhilde’s voice, calling, as he walked down the ramp, “Thor? Is that you? I didn’t expect to see you so--”

She stopped as she came around the side of the _Benatar_ , her gaze sliding across him and the burden in his arms. The wind grabbed at the edges of the sheet, tearing it around, tugging strands of dark hair up into the air.

“Oh,” she said, reaching out to rest her hand on the _Benatar’s_ side. “Thor, I’m--”

He walked around her. He did not want to hear an apology. There was no apology that could cover his loss, in any case. Let the others tell her, let them share their perverse little explanations of what had happened, of his actions for the totality of the trip. He no longer cared what they said.

#

Thor did not return to the shack where he’d passed five years of grief mixed with just enough hope to keep him drinking. He did not stop anywhere in New Asgard, and if there were changes he did not see them. He walked out through the main street, towards the cliffs along the sea.

He walked until he found a spot that looked as though it had never been seen with living eyes, and then he knelt and laid Loki carefully across the hardscrabble stone. Finding wood took time. He had nothing but time, so he did not mind, bringing back bleached branches and broken roots, building a pyre upon the edge of the cliff.

He made it high - not high enough - nowhere near grand enough for the man who had been a prince of Asgard, it’s king for a time, Thor’s lover. He stood back to look at it. He knew well enough that the Guardians had followed him, noting their presence, but they had not approached. Someday he would owe them a thank-you for that.

He let them slip from his thoughts again, kneeling and lifting Loki. He seemed to weigh nothing when Thor placed him atop the pyre. He took Loki’s remaining dagger from his belt and placed it on his chest, laying Loki’s hand atop the handle. His fingers would not bend. Thor would not risk breaking them.

He brushed Loki’s hair away from his face, his still, pale face and looked him over. It was not enough. He did not know what _would_ be, but he knew it was not this. He held out his hand, waiting, closing his fingers around Stormbreaker’s stock when it smacked against his palm.

It was an ugly weapon. One he had not used well. But it was a kingly blade. And perhaps Loki would have more use of it where he was. He deserved _something_.

Thor placed the axe beside him, tucked into the curve of his elbow, and stepped back. Overhead, the storm clouds gathered, growing darker and higher as he stretched out a hand. It was easier, these days, to call forth a great wave of electricity. He brought down only a small strike, into the dry wood, which ignited even as the heavy drops of rain began to fall.

Thor stared at the steam and smoke rising, until he was soaked to the skin, until movement to one side caught his eyes, as Mantis walked towards the burying pyre, her eyes empty and her face stricken with grief.

Drax caught her before she could get to close, lifting her away as she struggled against him.

Thor turned his face aside.

Thunder crashed overhead.

#

Eventually, the flames went out. There was nothing left to burn. Thor stood there through it all, until the last of the embers died away, leaving nothing behind but wet ash.

He felt Nebula step up beside him, then, as though she had been waiting for the very last hint of the fire to die away. “You can’t stay with us right now,” she said. “It’s too dangerous for Mantis. She doesn’t have the filters to handle whatever you’re putting out.”

Thor nodded. He did not bother to deny the force of his emotions or to apologize. Besides, he felt that he was thinking clearly for the first time in far too long. The shock of finding Loki’s body had cut through the haze of chemicals in his mind. The following days had cleared away all traces of the alcohol. The shaking had even stopped earlier.

Sobriety was unfamiliar and not entirely welcome, but the desire to drink had burned away with Loki’s body. He’d held out the hope, all these years, that this was only some cruel trick, that someday Loki would step around a corner and laugh at him. That Thor would be furious and hurt, but, ultimately, reunited with him.

He’d been wrong. There had been nothing to hold out hope for, all along. He should have been taking action from the start, instead of waiting for someone else to sweep in and fix things for him.

Loki was dead, murdered to save Thor’s life, murdered in battle. He would be in Valhalla, in the lands of the dead. Thor _knew_ that people could return from those lands. He had proof.

The logic of it had swirled around in his head as the pyre burned. If Loki’s return for the dead _could_ be done, then Thor could not refuse to try. It was merely a matter of settling out the details. He needed help, the help of someone who could travel to the land of the dead and who would be willing to take him there.

He had somewhat limited options, on that front. Most of his people would have refused outright. Most would have attempted to stop him, if they knew. Valhalla was a sacred place. The dead were not to be disturbed.

But he believed Loki knew how to get there; if anyone had decided to flout the laws of their people and explore the lands of the dead, it would have been him. And Loki would _also_ be likely to help him, wouldn’t he? If he knew what Thor intended.

So, he needed Loki’s help, but a Loki from when? He’d weighed his options while staring into the flames, and decided he might be best served with a Loki from before everything began going wrong so terribly, before his failed first coronation and Loki’s discovery of his heritage.

Loki had known much, even then. Enough to help, surely, with all he had been able to pull off with the Jotun. And he had been more interested in learning everything possible, in gathering up knowledge, than lashing out to ease the deep hurts inside him.

Thor startled when Nebula reached out and placed a cautious hand on his shoulder. She squeezed, carefully; she’d been very hesitant with such contact after breaking Quill’s collarbone in an attempt to offer him comfort after the third time Gamora expressed her displeasure with his affections with her kneecap.

“Do you remember telling me once of witches?” Thor asked, his thoughts spiraling out, building on one another. He’d forgot what it was like to think clearly.

Her fingers tightened. Were he not Aesir, she would have snapped bone. She said, slowly, “I do.”

“Where are they?”

Because if Loki were not going to return to him, if all his long patience had really been for nothing, well… He’d finally found the purpose he was looking for, floating in space, long dead and abandoned.

Servos shifted in Nebula’s arm and hand. “You cannot change the past.”

“I understand how it works,” he said, because he did. He’d learned that much on Frigga’s knee, listening to her break down the methods for moving through time, all the limitations on such forms of travel, all her warnings.

He knew of restrictions and limitations even the Midgardians seemed unaware of, which had been irrelevant to their quest.

“So you understand that you cannot… fix this.” Delicacy did not suit her. It was one of the reasons he liked her so much. Her attempts at it were only endearing. 

He turned to her, looking into her dark eyes without truly seeing. “You can tell me it can’t be undone,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. Where are they?”

She met his gaze for a moment, nodded, and held up one of her hands. A holographic map projected from her palm, showing a cluster of stars Thor knew in passing, a small moon around one of the pictured gas giants glowing with bursts of information.

“I don’t know if she’s still alive,” Nebula said. “But she had power.”

Thor nodded. “Thank you.” He clasped her shoulder before turning away. He saw no reason to delay. There was no longer anything for him here. There had not been anything for him in the universe for years, he had just blinded himself to that fact. But it did not _have_ to be so.

“Thor,” Nebula called, before he could open the Bifrost. He glanced back at her and found her frowning. “Make sure you’re presentable.”

He flashed his teeth at her, extended a hand, and left Midgard behind.

_two_

Nebula gave good advice. It was never a sound idea to approach a witch in any way that might cause offense. He knew that much. So he did not travel directly to the distant moon, stopping, instead, to ensure he was clean and well-groomed.

He did an initially sloppy job of hacking off his hair and beard. He straightened the damage as much as he could, made it worse, and finally shaved his head, only cutting himself once. The beard made it through, though it came out the other side severely shortened.

He looked at himself in the mirror of the small room he’d rented afterwards. It grew harder and harder to recognize himself as time marched on. The scar through his eyebrow, the mismatched eyes, the shorn head… He looked like some stranger. The thought drew a smile. He felt like a stranger.

He had lost weight as well, he realized. It seemed the sort of thing that should have occurred to him earlier, but he had barely noticed gaining any. His body felt like some distant thing, barely connected to him.

Eating had grown to be an unpleasant task. He’d forgotten it more often than not when traveling with the Guardians: as long as there was money for drink, what did he need of food? The thought of drink sunk teeth into him once entertained. He could go downstairs. He could find something to drink. He could seek out the emptiness that it brought.

He set that thought aside. He had too much to do, now. There could be no more hiding. Nothing would be resolved if he did. He called on his armor, instead, satisfied that he was as presentable as it was possible for him to get, and he went to the moon.

There was nothing in the world to delay him.

#

The witch’s moon had no name that he could find, which was a pity and a surprise. It was beautiful, verdant and lush. Nebula’s directions led him true to the witch’s home, but he wouldn’t have needed them. She’d crafted great, sprawling gardens of flowers and herbs around it.

Thor walked up a trail lined with heavy, dark blooms tended by small, flittering creatures that he did not look at too closely. The home stood about the riotous blooms, on finely carved stilts. A winding staircase led up to the front door.

Thor did not pause upon reaching the first stair. 

The door was a pale, red wood, covered with carvings that moved and shifted as he watched. He saw a boy, young, clad in the garb of Asgard, running across the door, aging as he went. He recognized himself only around the time the figure reached out and caught Mjolnir.

He knocked, to disrupt the unfurling of his history, but it did nothing. The images marched on, past his bent head during exile on Midgard, past the invasion of the Chitauri, past visits to Loki’s cell, past Surtur, past Hela, past the stretch of his body over Loki’s, past Thanos’s beheading, past the burning pyre.

The door opened only then. A woman stood there, of a race Thor was not familiar with. She was tall, with dark, spotted fur and large ears. Her white eyes reflected the light. Her knees bent the wrong way. She had four arms. Each of her hands had seven fingers. She crossed her arms when she opened the door, gazing at him with sightless eyes.

“My Lady,” Thor said, pushing down the useless ache in his chest, sketching a bow - some long buried lesson on propriety from his mother rearing its head - and straightening. “I am--”

“The Thunderer,” she said. “Thor Odinson. The King of Asgard. I know who you are.”

Thor nodded. “It is an honor to meet you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are simply delighted to make my acquaintance.” She turned and smiled. “Come in, come in.” The inside of her home appeared significantly larger than the outside indicated, huge and sprawling, full of hanging herbs, waving silks, and the smell of cooking food.

She gestured at the table. Thor sat slowly. “I’ve come to ask you for a boon.”

“I don’t give boons,” she said. “There’s no profit in it. But you may be able to purchase what you want.”

Thor swallowed. “Do you know, then, what I want?”

She hesitated in the middle of pouring a bowl of soup. “Better than you do.” 

She sat the bowl in front of him. The smell of food made his stomach turn. “What will it cost me, then?” he asked, flinching when she set a full, frothy mug down in front of him. “I only drink water.”

“As you wish,” she said, and the liquid turned clear in an instant. “As for the cost, you will need a year and a day, so it will be a year and a day of labor in my service. Silent service. I do not tolerate questions or interruptions from my servants. Not a single word. Can you swallow your pride enough for that? Enough to do whatever I ask without question or hesitation?”

Thor barely remembered what pride felt like. He stared into the witch’s white eyes. “I can,” he said. “But I don’t understand. I need to go back far longer than a year--”

“No questions,” the witch said, scowling with her strangely split lips. “No hesitation. I know what you need. You decide now if you will pay the price for it, or if you will not.”

Thor stared at her. He had no where else to go, if he turned her down. There was just her offer, or the miserable unspooling of history into the future, dragging him along every damned step of the way, alone, cursed, and broken. “I accept your terms,” he said.

“Good,” she said, smiling. “Eat. Drink. Sleep. You will need your energy. Your service begins tomorrow.”

#

Thor ate a few bites and drank a few swallows. His appetite had gone, along with the memory of how to eat true food, how to enjoy it. He did not sleep, though the witch showed him to a fine enough room, with a bed large enough for his frame. He tossed and turned through the night, and crawled from the mattress with the rising of the sun.

“There is a mountain outside,” the witch said, already bent over her work, glowing in the air before her. A large fruit sat near her hands. “It blocks the sunlight in the morning. Remove it. You may use this.” She gestured at a pick-axe, one that seemed to be made from a single piece of shining metal. It leaned beside the door. Thor said nothing, only turned towards the door. “Take the pear,” she said, as he walked by the table. “Eat.”

He took the pear. He’d promised to obey her, so he ate it, moving out the door. The mountain stretched towards the sky. It did block the sun, Thor saw. He hefted the pickaxe she’d given him and, sighing, started on his way.

It took him months of tireless effort to bring down the mountain, using all the strength he had available. He beat against the stone day and night, until finally it stood no longer. Every morning, as the sun rose, he found a pear waiting nearby, beside a tall glass of water. He ate and drank, bright enough to spot an order even when unspoken.

He returned to the witch’s house aching, his hands red and blistered, his stomach an empty pit despite the fruit and the water. “Good,” she said. “Sleep.”

#

He slept, but only briefly, before the nightmares came to him, creeping into his mind, starting sweet, a brief memory of Loki smiling at him as Thor pushed his hair back, before Loki’s face changed, the life and color going out of it, livid red marks blossoming on his neck, blood trickling from his nose. Thor woke with a cry. He scrubbed at his face, and rolled out of the sweat-soaked sheets.

“There is a river by my property,” the witch said, when he stumbled out of his room. A platter of faintly steaming pastries sat by her elbow. “It is in the way of my planned expansion. Redirect it. You may use this.” She gestured at a shovel. It appeared made of the same material as the axe. “Take the pastry. Eat.”

He ate. He had promised to obey, and that meant choking down every bite. He knew well enough how exact practitioners of magic were. He could not risk angering her with such a foolish act of rebellion.

He found the river; it would have been impossible to miss. It stretched wide and deep, brimming with rapids and flashing water. He sighed and took the shovel she’d given him, planning a new path for the raging water.

It took months to dig it, wide and deep, to shore up the bed, and then, finally, to dam the old river and change its course. Every morning he found a pastry and water. He returned to her filthy and browned by the sun, for he had abandoned wearing his armor; it did not suit the task set before him. “Good,” she said. “Sleep.”

He tried. He laid down his head and shut his eyes, but he saw only Loki, floating in space - turning slowly in the void to ask, “Where were you?”

Thor woke, panting, and went to find the witch. “It is a day of rest,” she said. “You missed all the others. Clean yourself off.”

He nodded and went to the bathing rooms she showed him, biting his tongue. It took a long time for the water to run clear. He did not look at himself in the mirror as he left. There was nothing in the reflection that he wanted to see.

#

“There was a mine,” the witch said, the following day. “There was an accident there, long ago. It has burned beneath the ground since that day. You can take this.” She gave him a long piece of cloth. “Extinguish the flames. Take this meat pie. Eat.”

Thor ate. The food did not make him want to throw up nearly so much. She led him to the mines, to a dark hole into the earth, belching forth heat and smoke. He took nothing the cloth to wrap around his face, and marched into the blackness. He only removed it to eat the meat pie that appeared every morning.

It took months to extinguish the last of the flames. He stumbled out of the mine coughing, covered in soot, burned here and there. He limped back to the witch. “Sleep,” she said. He slept, from the time his head hit the pillow until the rising sun woke him, sobbing, in the throws of dreams he could not escape.

“There is a spirit among the winds of this world that bears me great hatred,” she said, when he limped from the room. “Destroy it. Take the tart. Eat.”

The tart was sweet and not baked all the way through. Thor ate it anyway - ate it every morning, though it was never baked properly - and set off into the world. He hunted the winds until he found the irksome spirit and fought it, then, tooth and nail, for weeks upon weeks, until at last he struck it down and broke it upon a beam of sunlight.

He traveled back to the witch, and she told him, “Sleep.”

He tried, but his injuries ached and bit at him with hungry teeth, keeping him from snatching more than a few moments of rest. The next morning she said, “It has been a year and a day. You are free from my geas. I return your voice and accept your service. It was finely done.”

He nodded. The thought of speaking was strange, but he managed to say, “Then you will give me what I need?”

“Yes,” she said, and untied a small bag from her belt, placing it on the table before him. She opened the bag and removed four sparkling orbs from it’s velvet darkness, placing each one on the table. “Each one will take you when and where you need to go.”

Thor lifted one of the orbs. It glittered, casting multi-colored lights across his fingers. “How do I use them?” Thor’s voice was a rasp, hoarse with disuse.

“You must hold the when and where in your mind. The orb will take you there, expelling its power in the process. They will last for a year and a day.” She smiled. “So you should move quickly.”

Thor carefully placed the orbs back into the bag. He closed the clasp, folding his hands around it. He kept breathing, in and out, ignoring the racing of his pulse. “I can just use them? I don’t have to...” he trailed off, waiting for another problem to arise.

“They’re yours, aren’t they?” She shrugged. “You can clean up first, if you wish. You can even stay one more night, if--”

“That won’t be necessary,” Thor said, pulling the bag a little closer, wetting his lips. Maybe it would have been smarter to rest, to sleep on the decision. He had not yet plunged into it. He could still turn aside from this course. But he couldn’t begin to accept any further delay. He looked into the witch’s knowing expression and said, “But I would use your bathing chamber, one last time.”

#

Thor scrubbed, washing filth and dried blood away. There were new wounds on his body, going to scars. There was less of his body, too; a year of hard labor, without a drop of liquor, had seen to that. 

He had grown shaggy once more and frowned, tugging at the hair and beard. He was not surprised to find trimmers laid out for him. He cut off the long strands of hair until he could almost see his scalp through the locks, and trimmed the beard into some kind of order.

He stared into the mirror, then, at a face weather-worn, with short hair, two-tone eyes, and new scars. It looked little enough as he had always pictured himself, which was, he supposed, all for the best.

He clad himself in warrior’s garb, changing the shape of his armor with effort, to something that looked well-worn but finely made, the armor to be expected from an dedicated campaigner, not one of Asgard’s princes. It was a better disguise than he’d managed last time, when he had not been sober enough to realize that sticking out was almost as dangerous as not looking the way he should. 

Mother would recognize him still, he had no doubt. He planned to avoid her, selecting a time he was fairly certain both she and Odin had been off-world, on one of the trips they took for the pleasure of travel alone. Or so Odin had said, anyway.

He blew out a breath, satisfied enough that he would not be immediately recognizable, wishing, for a brief moment, that he’d ever bothered to learn Loki’s tricks for changing face and form. But even if he were seen to have some resemblance to his younger self, well… Odin had more cousins and nephews than could be counted, many of them less than legitimate. 

Thor could pass himself off as a distant relation, curious about the royal family’s youngest son. That would not be too strange a story to tell, if he were asked. It had happened, in truth, more than once as they grew to adulthood. Loki’s dark eyes and sharp features had ever had their share of admirers.

He grimaced and turned from the mirror. It was the longest he’d looked at himself since-- in some time. His appearance served as a reminder of many failures; he resisted the urge to slam the side of his hand against the glass and walked away. Better to go. Better to plunge forward than dwell in the past. Better to focus on the future, on fixing what had gone wrong.

#

Thor exited the witch's home before drawing out one of the orbs. He did not know what it would do to her habitations to use it within. The orb tingled faintly against his skin as he stared into it, thinking about a night, long in the past, and a quiet corner of the palace, wondering how exactly he needed to--

The sensation felt little like traveling through Stark’s machine. While Stark’s machine left him feeling mostly nauseous, this one left him alternately burning hot and freezing cold, feeling as though different parts of his body were all trying to occupy the same spot at once, and then, abruptly, he stumbled forward under a dark sky, with the familiar sounds of night birds in the air.

_three_

Thor stood, skin atingle, in a lesser used courtyard beyond the main wing of the palace, with the night sky stretched overhead, full of stars he had not seen from this position in space for too long. For a moment he gazed skyward, remembering countless nights spent counting and naming the stars, and then tearing his eyes away.

Sound came to him on the air, laughter and conversations. In the great hall, there was yet feasting going on. He heard his own voice, raised in the midst of telling some ribald joke to the delight of the Warriors Three.

Their voices cut at him, slicing with guilt. If he had only--

But he had not. And they were dead. As dead as all the rest.

Thor gritted his teeth, tugged his newly drab armor to order, and marched through the courtyard, into the palace proper. He could not stop to think. If he did, surely he would turn back. Surely he would. He passed a few guards, a maidservant. None of them so much as gave him a second look. They’d been so trusting, once upon a time, undoubting that anyone who made it into the palace must belong there.

Their laxness would cost them all, someday. Thor’s hands balled to fists; he forced them to relax, difficult with his pulse raising in his chest, faster and faster with every step. His feet carried him to Loki’s rooms without fail, the long habits of the past leading him true.

He had not stood before Loki’s door for so many years. He had not visited, not after Loki fell from the Bifrost, not after he returned Loki to Asgard, not...not at all. Returning to the space where he had spent so much time had been too painful a prospect to be endured. 

He stood before the door, his pulse pounding so loudly it blocked out all other sound. For a moment, his nerve threatened to flee him. What was he doing? This was madness, and he knew that, but he knew also he had no other choices, no options yet untried.

And he had to try.

He raised a hand and knocked, and then there was nothing to do but stand, trying not to look the way he felt inside, until the door swung open.

Loki did not stand directly on the other side. He stood across the room, at a shelf filled with scrolls and ancient tomes, his back to the door, and the sight of him hit like a knife to the gut. He was young, young and tall and slender, only barely grown to manhood. His hair fell dark and smooth around his chin. He did not wear leathers, clad instead in the soft green fabrics he’d preferred before their lives turned to nothing but a miserable slog through one battle after another.

Thor wavered on his feet, locking his knees and resisting the urge to grab for the doorframe, knowing his should say something but unable to make his jaw work.

“I didn’t expect a visit until after the feasting ended,” Loki said, without looking around, holding a tome in his arms and frowning over it. “And by the sound of it half the court is still in their cups.”

He glanced up then and froze, just for an instant, his eyes widening and his fingers tightening on the book. “Oh,” he said, a soft sound as his gaze raked across Thor. 

Loki’s eyes widened further. He set aside the tome in his arms, not even looking at where he placed it, taking a step forward. “Thor?” he asked, moving closer. Thor jerked a step back, startled by the curious wonder in Loki’s eyes, the agony of seeing the expression again after so long. “What… what happened to you?”

And this was not going as Thor anticipated. He had planned to explain, to need to convince Loki of his identity. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t have to. His tongue did not wish to function. Loki followed him across the room until Thor made himself stop. “You are...” Loki said, looking at Thor’s eyes, his hair, his shoulders. He waved a hand, making as though to circle around Thor. 

Thor turned to keep him in sight. Thor should have _known_ this would happen. He’d been a fool to imagine he would successfully disguise himself from Loki. He grimaced, “Loki--”

“You look older,” Loki said, jerking abruptly to a stop, reaching up to touch Thor’s cheek, fingers cool and familiar and so dear that Thor felt their touch as a knife dragged across his skin, freezing. Loki’s eyes widened, all at once. “Thor,” he said, turning Thor’s face from side to side, “Thor, have you traveled through time?”

Focusing on this conversation, the present moment, took an amount of effort that felt impossible to marshall. So many memories kept rising up in Thor’s thoughts, too much grief, too many words he wanted to say with Loki gazing up at him, hand resting against his cheek.

He swallowed them all back, pushing down six years of yearning, and said, “Yes.”

Loki laughed, fast and punchy, “That’s--why?” His expression shuttered as quickly as that, eyes narrowing as he looked at Thor. “And what happened to your eye?” His fingers slid towards the scar above Thor’s brow. “What happened to your hair?”

“It’s--” Thor reached out to touch Loki; Loki was touching _him_ , surely he was allowed this much, at least. He slid careful fingers down Loki’s hair, rolling strands between his fingers, the stabbing agony in his gut worsening. “It’s a long story,” he said, his voice hoarse. “And not one I can tell you.”

Loki could not know what would happen in their futures. It could change too much. Thor knew that. He didn’t _need_ to know what had happened to help Thor in the future, he could travel forward, be kept away from everything, and returned with nothing but a mad story to think about in the coming years.

Loki stilled as Thor tucked his hair back, wanting to see his face, though it was not, really, the face Thor missed so fiercely. Time and pain had changed his Loki in subtle ways. “Alright,” Loki said, easing back a step. Thor pushed down the urge to hold him in place. “Can you tell me why you’re here?”

Thor wetted his lips. He should have planned his explanation better; he should have planned it at all. But he hadn’t, and it was too late for anything else but to go forward. He said, “Because I need your help.”

“My help,” Loki said, tilting his head to the side. “My help now?” He gestured around his room and asked, when Thor nodded, “Why?”

“I can’t tell you.” 

“Hm.” Loki kept looking him over, as though he had not seen all there was to see yet. Thor knew there was not much interesting to take in about him anymore. “My help with what?” He smiled, sharp. “Can you tell me that?”

Thor had missed that smile. It, at least, had not changed. He swallowed convulsively as his throat tightened and his eyes burned. “I need to travel to Valhalla,” he said, watching Loki’s smile freeze over. “I think you can get me there.”

Loki glanced towards his door, fast, his expression easing somewhat at the confirmation that it was closed. He said, quieter, with no sign of his smile, “I’m not sure why you would think such a thing. Everyone knows the living are forbidden from traveling to--”

“Loki,” Thor said, shaking his head. “Please, there is no need for that. I am not concerned with what is forbidden and what is not.”

Loki shut his mouth, after a moment, abandoning his line of carefully crafted words. His gaze narrowed further. “Very well,” he said. “Let us say that I could take you there. Why would you want me to?”

Thor stared at him, gathering strength for the last rush. He drew in a breath, squaring his shoulders, and said, “Because I lost someone. And I need to bring them back.”

Loki’s brows drew together. He said, “You want to-- _You_ want to travel to Valhalla and bring someone back? _You_?” Thor nodded, waiting only for a judgment one way or another. “What happened to you?”

“I can’t--”

“Yes, yes,” Loki said, waving a hand. “You can’t tell me. I remember.” He paced around, circling Thor again, as though getting another angle would help him settle whatever thoughts were in his mind. “It can’t be done,” he said, finally, as Thor turned to keep him in sight.

Thor frowned. “Just tell me what you want for your help,” he said, not in the mood to barter about for Loki’s assistance. “Whatever it is, I will--”

“It is not a matter of payment,” Loki said, his expression shifting again. “I can take you to Valhalla, that’s true. I can even show you the dead, though they will not be happy to see you. But you can’t bring anyone back. It isn’t possible.”

Thor shrugged. “There are those who would say that traveling to Valhalla would not be possible. I have seen you do--” He caught himself before further words could spill out, and changed the course of his sentence. “I believe you’ll find a way.”

Loki blinked, looking taken aback. “You think I’ll find a way to bring the dead back? Just--just like that?” Thor could only nod. Loki always found a way, even when all others said there was no possible path towards a goal. His mind worked in ways Thor’s didn’t, that perhaps no other’s on Asgard did. “That’s… flattering,” Loki said, a brief smile touching his mouth. “But unfounded, I think.”

“No,” Thor said. “Will you help me?”

Loki’s smile washed away into a frown. He stared. “Who is it?” he asked, arms crossing over his chest. “Who would we be going to retrieve?”

Thor stared at him, for a moment seeing only the funeral pyre, Loki floating in space, Loki at the end of Thanos’s arm, suffocating for air while Thor knelt, useless. He blinked the images away. “I can’t tell you.”

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes. “Of course. Of course. Well, it can’t be Mother or Father, you have to know that they’d never agree to return. I cannot see you attempting such a violation for even any of your friends. It must--”

“Loki,” Thor interrupted, grimacing. He should have expected this, too, this constant need to poke and prod at every possible secret. “You cannot know.” At least not yet. Thor would have to find some way to… obscure the truth, soften it, before they reached Valhalla.

Loki only waved a hand. “A lover,” he said and, upon catching the look on Thor’s face, he smiled, victorious. “Yes, it would be your lover. Who was it? Do I know them?”

“Stop,” Thor snapped, memories climbing up the back of his neck, Loki’s fingers gripping at his shoulders, his head thrown back against plain, worn sheets. “Please. Just tell me if you will help me or if you will not.”

Loki made a dismissive gesture. “Of course I’ll help you,” he said. “This sounds far more entertaining than anything that I could get into around here. I’ll only need time to prepare. We’ll have to find a good place to start, we have a few options, I can take you--”

“We can’t start here,” Thor said, before Loki could pull down anymore books. “The--the person I lost. They died in my time. They won’t be in Valhalla now. Here.”

“You’re going to take me through time,” Loki said, turning to look at him, expression suddenly hungry. “You should have opened with that, brother. Very well. That will make it somewhat harder for me to know where we can enter the paths that lead to Valhalla. Unless you know of a place with a connection to the realm of the dead? Someplace where many died? Or a place where someone particularly noteworthy perished?”

Thor thought of Odin, dissolving to light on a cliff in Midgard. “I might know of such a place,” he said, carefully, and Loki grinned at him.

“Perfect,” he said. “Just let me--”

The knock on his door made him jump. Thor’s hand drifted to the axe at his hip, and Loki waved at him. “That’s you,” he said, chiding. “Don’t you recognize your own knock?”

Thor did. It was difficult to unwrap his fingers from around the axe. “Stand over there,” Loki said, gesturing towards the far corner. “You won’t leave until you’ve said your piece. I’ll cloak you. Stay silent until you leave.”

Thor opened his mouth to protest. Surely Loki could just send him away. But he remembered himself at this age, and nodded instead, retreating to the corner. He crossed his arms, and Loki waved a hand in his direction, a chill settling across his skin. 

He felt exposed in the pale light as Loki opened the door. For a moment, his mind raced down wild paths, trying to imagine what excuses he would have to make should he be found here, in Loki’s rooms with the night far along. Perhaps he would not be recognized, he thought. He looked little as he had, so many years ago, though Loki had known him. The thought made his chest ache, in the center of his heart, where he thought he could surely feel no more pain.

His thoughts derailed at the voice at the door, his own, but with so much grief and so many years shaved off of it, exclaiming, “Brother! There you are!”

“Here I am,” Loki said, quiet and amused, watching as Thor’s younger self tripped into his rooms. “And here you are.” His mouth quirked up in the corners. His gaze did not slip towards where Thor stood against the wall.

Neither did the gaze of Thor’s younger self, who moved farther into the room, looking at the books spread open on the desk and across the bed. He looked right past Thor, standing against the wall, without so much as the briefest of hesitations.

“I was looking for you,” the younger Thor said, sounding mildly affronted. He’d been a spoiled child; Thor remembered being so, but it was a distant sort of memory. So separated from all he had come to know that trying to recall it sometimes felt like trying to remember some stranger, some acquaintance only barely known.

His younger self wore his hair long, his beard trimmed neat and yet stained with mead. He carried Mjolnir with an easy lack of care, dropping her near Loki’s bed. “Were you?” Loki asked; he sounded distracted, and Thor remembered, abruptly, this evening, he remembered finding his way to Loki’s rooms after drinking too much, not that unusual in itself, truly.

He remembered saying, “Yes, where were you? I thought you planned to join us this evening,” and by ‘us’ he had meant himself, the Warriors Three, and Sif, all dead now, dead and gone and--

“Something came up,” Loki said, moving back to his desk, frowning down at all the books and scrolls sprawled upon it. Thor watched his younger self glance at the texts and dismiss them - he remembered doing _that_ as well, and the way his gaze had strayed to the more interesting fall of Loki’s dark hair, the curve of his spine, his long, clever fingers.

Thor clenched his jaw shut and looked away, wishing his younger self would _go_ , so he would not have to experience these memories so viscerally.

“Well, I will tell you about what you missed, then,” the younger Thor said, moving closer. He would be smiling, Thor did not have to look to know. “We--”

“Tell me tomorrow,” Loki said, interrupting, and Thor flinched against the wall, because that was _not_ what he’d said in Thor’s memories. He had listened with distant indulgence to the tale, humming along and interjecting with comments that cut, that Thor had protested to and found funny, all at the same time.

He looked over to find his younger self gaping. “Tomorrow?” he asked, conspiring to look wounded. “But Loki--”

“Tomorrow,” Loki said, turning then to gaze upon Thor’s younger self with a smile. “And perhaps I will have a story to tell you, too.” 

The younger Thor blinked and opened his mouth, frowning. Loki reached out and touched him, then, cupping his cheek with pale fingers.

“Go to sleep, Thor,” Loki said, his voice taking on a strange cadence that crept into Thor’s thoughts on a spider’s legs and prompted him to yawn. “You had a long day, I can tell. Your story can wait until morning.”

The younger Thor swayed, leaning into Loki’s touch. “Perhaps you are right,” he said, and did not protest overmuch when Loki led him towards the door and out of it, into the empty hall beyond. Watching it made Thor’s head ache. He remembered staying in Loki’s room this night, telling him a tale that he had probably not cared about.

He startled when the door closed, and Loki heaved a sigh. “I thought he’d never leave,” Loki said, moving back to his desk. 

Thor stared at him, remembering, clearly, how this evening was supposed to go - how it _had_ gone, once. He said, “We talked through the night.”

“Hm?” Loki did not look towards him, trailing his fingers across a line of text, his eyes darting around the page.

“When this happened before. We spoke until the sun rose.” And he had left his brother’s rooms after pulling a blanket across Loki’s body, where he slept leaning against his bed, with wants he should never have felt curled low and hot in his gut.

“Did we?” Loki glanced at him, head tilted to the side. And then he shrugged. “Well, we’re not going to this time.”

Thor stared at him for a moment, feeling as though he were robbing his younger self of something, and unable not to feel a strange surge of… pleasure, almost, that he would be favored over that callow younger man. He shook the thoughts away. None of that mattered. Not now.

Loki worked in silence then, for some time, before finally blowing out an irritated breath and looking over at Thor. “I need some time to make some final preparations, if we’re in as much of a hurry as you appear to be. And I can’t do it with you staring at me. Go wait outside.” He gestured at the door.

Thor had been recognized within moments each time he returned to the past. He said, “Perhaps I should stay in here. I won’t stare.” He hadn’t realized he had been.

“No,” Loki said, and Thor could not know for sure that he were not just being deliberately frustrating. “I need to be able to concentrate. Just…” He waved a hand. “Wait outside. Make sure no one disturbs me. This shouldn’t take me long.”

Thor clenched his jaw shut around a further protest. What good would it do? Besides, he did not want to risk changing Loki’s mind. He stepped back into the hall with a single backwards look. Loki had already turned aside, kneeling to open a chest by his bed, as Thor shut the door, intending to lean against the wall and wait.

He only noticed his younger self in the hall as the door clicked closed. His double looked him over, looked past him to Loki’s door, and Thor watched his expressions change, wondering if he was even still so obvious with the displays of his emotions. He saw hot fury, jealousy, something sharper and hurt, as his younger self continued towards him.

He should have expected his past self would return, not to be shooed away for too long. He’d always been stubborn. Stubborn enough to go digging through the wine cellars by all appearances, to fetch one of the bottles Loki preferred to mead. 

“What were you doing in my brother’s room?” the younger Thor asked, looking Thor over once more with a deepening scowl. 

“Merely passing the time,” Thor said, remembering to bow his head at the last moment, realizing too late that he had put nothing like respect in his voice.

The younger Thor’s jaw tightened. Thunder rumbled outside, a shameful little lasp in his younger self’s control, as he moved to step around Thor, for Loki’s door.

“Best leave him,” Thor said, because Loki had sent him to keep others away, even though he knew he ought to leave, before his younger self opened his eyes enough to realize that something was odd about him. Then again, at this age he had been solely concerned with his own place in the world; he’d thought it was the center. 

A stab of sharp regret led him to be less than cautious with his tongue when he added, searching for something that would make his younger self leave, “He’s quite worn out.”

The younger Thor _almost_ snarled; Thor smiled back, working to play the role he’d fallen into, a beau leaving a lover’s room in the midnight hours. His younger self said, stiff, “I do not need your advice on when to see my brother.” He took another step forward, intentionally too close, shoulder bumping Thor, who rooted his feet in place.

His younger self stumbled, no doubt off-balance from the drink on his breath and also, Thor realized, watching all the expressions move across a face so like his, simply not as strong. He smiled - it felt ugly - remembering a time when he had thought without reason that he was the mightiest warrior in all of Asgard.

“You should return to your own rooms,” Thor said, clapping his younger self on the shoulder, unsurprised when the other shoved his hand off, face gone ruddy with anger. 

“You should mind your tongue.” Another rumble of thunder, echoed this time, though the younger Thor did not seem to notice the accompaniment. “Who are you, anyway, man outside my brother’s door?”

Thor shrugged. “No one of import to one such as you,” he said. “I am called Balder.”

“Balder,” the younger Thor said, as though committing the name to memory. “You fancy yourself a warrior, Balder?” He gestured at Thor’s plain armor, at the serviceable axe at his waist. His own armor shone and shimmered, even if there were stains on his cloak, and from mead, not blood.

Thor’s smile stretched a little wider, bearing more of his teeth. “I’ve known many battles in my time.”

“I’m sure,” his younger self said, dismissive, though he was only barely out on the battlefield at this age. He had killed warriors, that was true. But the battles in this time had been… for play, almost. Before the crush of bodies, the loss of life, had become nightmares that haunted Thor’s memories and dreams. It had been a game to him. “Perhaps you would be interested in showing me the skill you must have learned in these battles? Unless you, too, are worn out?” The younger Thor all but spat the words, worked into a temper. Jealous.

And Thor should have refused. He had no memory of fighting some strange man in the middle of the night, much less one he discovered outside Loki’s bed, post some sort of tryst. It was not an event he would have forgotten.

But he did not need to _change_ anything, really. He wouldn’t harm his younger self. Not in any way that couldn’t heal, anyway. And a single good thumping would not be enough to change him. It would take an exile, the loss of Loki, Mother’s death, the long, slow march of Father’s failures, to do that.

Thor shook off those thoughts and shrugged. “Why not?” he said, “I wouldn’t dream of denying you, my prince.”

His younger self reddened yet further and turned on a heel. Thor followed him through the familiar halls, to a sparring ground now turned to dust and nothingness. His younger self stalked towards the center of the sparring circle and raised a hand to the air, calling to Mjolnir. He had been such a fool, Thor realized with that familiar twist of shame, which faded away in the face of grief as he realized who else stood in the square beyond.

The Warriors Three stirred from a contented pile near one corner of the ground, Sif’s dark head rising beside them. They were obviously well in their cups from the flushes in their faces and the laughter in Sif’s voice when she called, “Thor! We did not expect you to return to us!”

“I found a sparring partner,” the younger Thor said, gesturing back. Thor nodded when they glanced at him. He stretched out his arms and shoulders, not wanting to look too long upon their faces, not wanting Sif to look too long upon his. If any of them were likely to be clear-headed enough to see through his ruse, it would be her.

“Sparring?” Fandral said, shoving fair hair from his face. “It’s no time of night for sparring. Come over here, bring the stranger. Let us drink and tell stories, instead. He looks like he must have some good ones.”

“Mayhaps I will give you a new story to tell about what happens when you challenge strangers while in your cups,” Thor said, the words a goad he knew he shouldn’t speak. He crouched and dragged his fingers through the dirt, the Asgardian earth lost forever to him, sense memories of a thousand sparring sessions here flowing up through him.

His younger self snarled, lightning dancing across his skin as he adjusted his grip on Mjolnir. Thor rolled his eyes, gripped his axe, and raised an eyebrow. “Well?” he asked. “Will we begin, then?”

The younger Thor rushed at him. He had rushed at everything, in those days, believing that would be enough to see him through. It had been, for a time. He had strength, even in his youth, and a natural proficiency for the brutal art of killing.

But natural skill only took one so far. He lacked yet experience. Thor met him easily, even without touching the power of the storm, laughing at the rising frustration on his younger self’s expression as the session dragged on, without ending magically in his favor.

The first time Thor knocked him down, his younger self boggled up at him, as though the world had just turned inside out. Even as a youth, it had been long since anyone had bested him at sparring. Thor grinned, ugly, and rested his axe against his shoulder, not offering his younger self a hand to his feet.

“Thor…” Fandral called, all the laughter chased from his voice. “Maybe you should not--”

The younger Thor shoved back to his feet, spitting red stained spittle down to the sand and charging forward. 

The second time Thor knocked him down, he knocked Mjolnir away, too. The hammer called to him, recognizing him as Mother had, as Loki had. He was painfully aware of it, laying across the courtyard, aware that if he thought on it even too hard, it would leap to his hand. And that, surely, would be telling.

He paced in a slow circle around his younger self, ignoring Mjolnir to say, “Well, boy? Are you going to get back up?” The youth rose at the words, shaking his head. The younger Thor did not look beaten, only increasingly furious as he called to Mjolnir and threw himself forward, into a fight he had to realize by now he could not win.

The third time Thor knocked him down, he kicked his younger self in the stomach, hard, forgetting all intentions of not actually harming him, and again, before putting a foot on his shoulder and rolling him onto his back. He heard, distantly, the Warriors Three yelling protests as he rested his foot on his younger self’s chest and looked down at him.

His younger self grabbed his ankle, flooding Thor’s body with lightning, and Thor remembered to flinch, but only barely. “That’s a nice trick,” he said, pushing harder, so angry with this boy, with all he had been. If he had only been _better_ , been less of an ignorant fool, maybe--

“Well, you two look like you’re finished,” Loki said, chilly, from across the courtyard. Thor shook away the red anger behind his eyes, taking a step back from his younger self, who rolled onto his side, coughed red across the sand.

Thor had no eyes for him. Loki stood near the entrance to the courtyard, his arms crossed, nothing on his expression as he watched Thor’s younger self. “Having fun?” he asked, arching one dark brow.

“Not really,” Thor said, flexing the fingers of his right hand in and out. He had dropped his axe during the last flurry of blows. It had felt good, at the time, to punch his younger face, watching some hint of awareness of his own weakness come into his younger self’s eyes. He bent and retrieved the axe as Sif and the Warriors Three swarmed around the younger Thor, who waved them away.

“Brother,” Loki called, “are you alright?”

The younger Thor jerked out a nod, pushing to his feet. “Of course,” he said, almost all traces of pain tucked away from his voice. “We were only sparring, Loki. It is too bad you missed it.”

“Mm,” Loki said, finally looking away, over to Thor. His eyes were unreadable. “Perhaps next time I won’t. Now, if you are done?” He half-turned, back in the direction of his quarters, and Thor nodded, shaking the last of the fight off. 

Perhaps it would have been better if he’d killed his younger self there, upon the sand. After all, if he were dead, Loki would sit the throne without any question. He would not fall through the stars, he would not be used against Midgard by Thanos. They would not discover the Aether, the Dark Elves would have no reason to come to Asgard. Perhaps, without all else going wrong, Odin would share word of Hela’s imminent escape. Perhaps, with Mother still alive, there could be a discussion with Hela….

“Coming?” Loki asked, shaking him from his thoughts. Thor sat those thought aside and did not look back as he walked out of the sparring area. He placed a hand on Loki’s back, daring, hoping his younger self _was_ looking, and they walked back to Loki’s room.

#

“I must admit,” Loki said, as they stepped through the door to his room. A pack sat on his bed, one of his bags that held more than it should have been able to. “I did not expect to find you attempting to murder your younger self.”

Thor grimaced. His anger was fading away, replaced by tired shame once more. “I wouldn’t have killed him,” he said. “I am trying not to alter your timeline.”

“Perhaps you should,” Loki said, shouldering his pack, glancing at Thor from the corners of his eyes. “From the look of you, things didn't go well in yours.”

Thor shook his head. He had thought about this conundrum over and over across his work for the witch. He said, “No, that would be… I could make things worse, if I try to change them. I could make it so people who were born never were, or…” He trailed off. The possibilities were numerous and too dire to mention. “It would be wrong for me to do. I only need your help.”

Loki stared at him, all dark eyes and curiosity. “And leave me to face all that happens in the future? Or am I untouched by whatever grief has struck you?”

Thor looked away from him, quickly, too afraid of what his expression would show. But what else could he do? _This_ Loki would help him bring his Loki back, only to be killed someday in turn, leaving _this_ Thor to visit some other world, some other Loki.

It would be a cycle, constantly repeated, but in the end, they would be together. He dared not change anything that could prevent that. “I would never do anything that would harm you,” he said, wishing he had not when Loki blinked at him, open surprise on his face for a moment before it was tucked away.

“Very well,” he said. “I suppose you would know.” He adjusted the straps of his bag and paused again. “Will we see my future self?”

“No,” Thor said, lying. But he had years of practice with that, now. His tongue did not stumble across the simple mistruth. Besides, they would not. Not until they’d reached the end of their journey. 

Loki hummed, eyes narrowing. No doubt his thoughts all churned and spiraled around inside his head. Thor saw no good end to that. Best to keep Loki moving, best to offer him shining pieces of knowledge to distract him from all the questions he would inevitably find if left to think about the future. “Are you ready?” Thor asked.

Loki stared at him for a moment and then nodded, walking over to him. He took Thor’s hand without any further hesitation, his fingers long and cool, familiar and lost. Thor looked down at their threaded fingers, his own battered, dirty, and Loki’s, and felt….

Too much.

He felt he should ask someone for forgiveness, but he knew not who to direct the apology towards and, anyway, he was not sorry enough not to try. He tightened his grip on Loki’s hand, tugged him a little closer, and reached for the bag with the orbs. 

#

Moving through time felt different with someone else in his grip. The world contracted around them and then expanded all at once into light and sound, brilliant and clear as they stood on the cliff face, overlooking the sea where Odin had finally passed into the lands of the dead.

Thor wondered sometimes if he had made it to Valhalla. He had not died in battle. But to imagine Odin not reaching Valhalla was… 

Almost heresy. 

Thor knew what heresy felt like, by now. Loki swayed for a moment beside him before taking in a deep breath and looking around. He pulled against Thor’s hold, and Thor released him, watching him turn in a slow circle, taking in the sky, the sea, the fields around them, breathing deep the air.

Loki finished his circle frowning at Thor. “This is... Midgard?” he asked, wrinkling his nose up.

Thor laughed, the first laugh he’d felt inclined to in years. “It is,” he said. “I know it is not much. But this is where Odin died. I hope that is important enough to make opening a path easier.”

Loki frowned at him, out across the sea, and back at him. “You are not joking,” he said, almost suspicious, his frown deepening when Thor shook his head. “Why would he die _here_?”

“I cannot tell you,” Thor said, but gently, watching the wind stir and lift Loki’s hair. He had been furious with Loki when last they stood here together, angry at him for faking his own death, for misplacing their father, for… 

It mattered little now. The anger had been a waste. Loki scowled more deeply, looking up at him. “You can,” he said, standing there in the early morning light of dawn, looking young, and familiar, and alive, like temptation itself. “Nothing is stopping you.”

“It would be wrong,” Thor said, looking out across the waves to avoid looking any longer at Loki. “Now, we are in my present day. Can you open the way to Valhalla?”

“Of course I can,” Loki sounded impatient, sighing and pacing around for a moment before finally coming to a stop directly on the spot where Odin had passed, his hands held out slightly before him. He hesitated there, glancing at Thor. “Are you certain you want me to? This will not be an easy journey, you understand that? And there is no way to bring anyone back.”

“I am sure you’ll figure something out,” Thor said, because he had to hold onto that belief, no matter what else happened. They would find a way. They would go to the lands of the dead. They would bring his Loki back. He would send this child into the past.

All would be well.

Loki said nothing for a long moment, regarding him unblinking, and then shrugged. “Alright,” he said. “Do not say I didn’t warn you.” 

_four_

Loki drew one of his knives and, before Thor could move to stop him, dragged it down across his palm. His blood spilled in a rush - he had cut deeply into his flesh - and he raised the edge of the knife, moving as though to stab the air, and--

It was not air he stabbed. There was a crack of sound as the blade slid into something, something that popped and sizzled with burning light, pouring out around the edges of the blade. Loki grunted, shoving down, opening a gash in the world. Light shone out, obscuring his form. Thor stepped forward, raising a hand to protect his eyes, worried that he would lose Loki in the brightness.

He reached out, grabbing Loki’s shoulder, and thought he heard Loki say, “This way!”

But there _was_ no way, only the impossible, blinding brightness, all around them. It grew so bright that he could not see his own hand, that when he shut his eyes it was as though his eyelids were not there. He squeezed his fingers into Loki’s skin, holding tight, yelling a question that he could not hear and that went unanswered, worried that he had been tricked or trapped, somehow.

And then the light was gone, completely, leaving them standing in a gray place, on gray stone, surrounded by gray air. Loki sank down all at once. Thor caught him, holding him steady and lowering him to the gray stone.

“Are you alright?” Thor asked, looking around the gray world. It did not look like any place he had ever been. It was overwhelmingly quiet, disturbingly so. He kept his voice at a whisper. “Loki?”

Loki waved a hand, the uninjured one. “Fine,” he said, whispering as well. “I’ve never brought anyone with me. Help me up.”

He trembled when Thor pulled him to his feet, swaying for a moment. He looked deathly pale. “Perhaps we should rest,” Thor said, unsure if the effect was due to the sudden movement through both time and the light to…. Wherever they were currently.

“No,” Loki said, eyes focusing all at once. “It isn’t safe to rest here. Or, it wasn’t in my time. I doubt it is improved.” He reached into his bag as he spoke, pulling out a cloth to wrap around his hand. “It’s unwise to leave a trail,” he said, flashing Thor a smile that managed to be the brightest thing in the entirety of the world.

“Why?” Thor asked, scanning the horizon and feeling the hair raise on the back of his neck. He took the cloth from Loki and bandaged his hand quickly, frowning at the depth of the cut.

“Because,” Loki said, flexing his fingers in and out, looking up through his eyelashes. “We are not the only folk who walk the grey ways. Come on. This way.”

#

There were no paths through the grey ways that Thor could see. Everything was just… unrelentingly grey, as though whoever was responsible for the creation of this place had begun the project and then left after making the ground and the sky. Even the ground and sky sometimes seemed to be one thing, as when Loki sighed and began walking sideways up the air without any problem.

Thor followed him, expecting to fall down to the ground, but gravity seemed to shift agreeably along, allowing them to walk upward at a ninety degree angle. Loki’s hair did not even fall back. The sky was so grey that it resembled the ground. After a few moments Thor forgot that they were not walking on the earth, in any case, and some of his nausea faded away.

Sometimes, sounds drifted in through the grayness. In those moments Loki drew to a stop, often sinking to a crouch and pulling Thor down. The noises had a large quality about them. Large and hungry. Thor squinted against the gray, but could not make out their source.

He tightened his grip on his axe anyway, waiting for the latest of the strange noises to pass. It helped to focus on the potential threat. If he allowed his thoughts to wander they turned to Loki, crouched close to him, staring unblinking out into the grayness.

Loki radiated little heat. He never had. But he smelled familiar, of strange magics, parchment, and ink. The fall of his hair against his cheek made Thor’s fingers itch. It had become habit, in the brief time they’d had on the refugee ship, to reach out and tuck those strands back.

“Is there something wrong with my face?” Loki asked, startling Thor from his thoughts. He was watching Thor from the corners of his eyes.

Thor flushed, looking aside. “No,” he said. “Can we go?”

“We can,” Loki said, standing and offering Thor a hand. “But are you sure? You were frowning mightily. Perhaps trying to look for differences? Do I look much changed in your time?”

For a moment, all Thor could see was the ruin of Loki’s face, still and terrible in those moments before the void of space reached out and swallowed them both. He blinked, shoving those memories down, deep, where they could not touch him. It had been so much easier to do that with the fuzziness of alcohol.

He missed the burn of liquor down his throat in that moment as he had not in months.

“No,” he said, choosing instead to remember Loki as he had been before that last terrible moment. “You don’t. Though your hair is longer.”

“Have I grown a beard?” Loki asked, still watching Thor’s expression, though he sounded nothing but lightly curious.

Thor shook his head. “No. You’ve never done that.”

“Hm,” Loki said, turning then to continue leading them along. “And do you prefer the longer hair?”

“Yes,” Thor said, and then realized he ought not to have, for his voice had gone strange and thick. But he had remembered the splay of Loki’s hair across his pillows, the fall of it around his face when Loki leaned over him, the way the silken strands felt between his fingers.

Loki’s steps faltered just for a moment, and Thor said, to his back, “It is only what I am used to seeing now.”

“Of course,” Loki said, without looking around. Thor clenched his jaw shut, resolving that he would not speak again until they reached their destination, until he had retrieved his Loki, until this younger version could be returned safely to his own time, to a past where only horrors awaited him.

#

There was no way to track the passage of time in this grey world. Everything just… continued, endlessly. The unrelenting sameness wore on Thor’s nerves and he broke his promise by asking, “Where are we, anyway? This is not Valhalla.”

“These are the grey ways,” Loki said, quiet. “They lead to many places. Including Valhalla.” 

“How long do they usually take to lead there?”

Loki grinned over his shoulder. “It depends,” he said.

Thor meant to frown back, but it was so good to see that grin directed once more in his direction that for a moment he could not remember how to do anything so much as breathe. Finally, he shook that dizzy feeling away. “It depends on what?”

Loki shrugged, turning to walk backwards. “How the realms align at the moment. The interstellar drift of cosmic energies. Where we started and when. It is lucky that you knew were Odin passed over. It brought us closer than we otherwise would have been.”

Thor wondered how much of the explanation was truth. “And how close are we?”

Loki held up a hand and wobbled it back and forth. “Hard to say. Closer than we were.”

Thor nodded. He had no better way to get to where he needed to be. Still. “And you have walked these paths before? To Valhalla?”

Loki nodded, clasping his hands at his back. “Yes.”

For a moment Thor could only stare at him. “Why?”

Loki shrugged once more, the movement smooth and familiar. “Why not? I wanted to see if I could find my way, and I could. But there was nothing to see. Just the dead fighting their endless battles and then going off to feast. I did not even see any Valkyries.”

Valkyrie -- Brunnhilde, for all that she hated the name -- would probably not approve if she knew what Thor were doing. It was for the best then, that she did not. Thor nodded. “Did you speak with the dead?”

“No.” Loki’s expression sobered then. “That’s… generally not a good idea, you know that, don’t you? The living aren’t supposed to be in Valhalla. The dead don’t take kindly to it.” He walked backwards in silence for a moment, and then added, “This person we’re going to try to bring back, are you sure he wants to leave?”

Thor thought of Loki, his Loki, trapped in an endless day of battling and feasting. “Yes,” he said, without even a fraction of doubt. “I’m sure.”

“Hm,” Loki said, turning back around to lead Thor onward through the grey.

#

They walked in timeless grey paths until Thor began to worry he would forget other colors, save for green and black, and pale alabaster. At least he would remember those. There was a strange absence of hunger in the grey ways. It existed, nagging now and then, but it was easy to set it aside, to ignore it and continue on.

Thor contemplated how used he’d become to hunger as they walked, jolted out of the musing by a sudden growl, closer than the others they’d heard.

Loki started, jerking his head towards the movement, his expression flashing open alarm. Thor started to crouch, conditioned by their previous encounters, and Loki caught his arm, yanking him back up and shouting, “Run!”

“What--?” Thor started, but a louder, echoing roar stopped him from continuing. The air reverberated. Loki cursed, Thor saw his mouth form the shape of the words, but could not hear them, and then Loki was dragging him forward.

Thor looked over his shoulder as they ran, watching something… form out of the grey air. It took shape from the air and the earth, becoming a thing with many arms and legs and more mouths. 

“We will never outrun it,” Thor shouted, for the beast was gigantic, and already running after them, eating up the distance with a jerky, ugly stride.

“We will,” Loki yelled back, still gripping Thor’s arm tight. “We’re almost--”

Thor never found out where they almost were. The ground beneath their feet rippled before he could, rising into strange shapes that hurt to look at, throwing them forward. Loki tripped to his knees; Thor lifted him bodily back to his feet, shoving him forward and turning to face the thing rising from the world itself

It was monstrous, whatever it was. Ugly and misshapen, with tongues lolling out of all of its mouths, dripping grey saliva down onto the world. Thor brandished his axe, stretching out his other arm when he spotted Loki jerking forward out of the corner of his eyes.

“You can’t fight them!” Loki yelled, grabbing his shoulder. “They _are_ the grey ways. Come on!”

The ground was rippling below them again. Thor looked back at Loki, sudden horror washing through him. He could not--he could not watch Loki die again--it would break him, utterly. He realized it even as he saw the shape forming behind Loki’s shoulder, something sharp edged and hooked as a claw, slicing down.

Thor grabbed him, pulling him close, and turning to put his body between the plunging claw and Loki’s body. His armor may have looked battered and old, but it was still strong, it--

Did nothing. He gasped at the hot wash of pain as the claw gouged through his armor and into him. Loki shouted something, his eyes suddenly very, very dark in his bone-pale face. Thor choked when the claw withdrew, stumbling, dragging Loki down with him. 

He felt Loki working an arm around him. He felt the ground moving. He’d been a fool. And then there was light, blinding light and pressure, before it went away, replaced by heat, darkness, and the smell of smoke.

He coughed and felt wetness crawling up his throat. “What were you thinking?” Loki was yelling at him, lowering him down. The ground no longer felt like it was moving. It felt like proper rock, instead of the horrible gray stuff. He sank against it, trying to breathe around the heavy feeling in his lungs.

A laugh burbled out of him. The universe could not allow them to be together, it seemed, for even a few days. Not without trying to kill one of them.

“Get this off,” Loki panted, ignoring his laughter, pulling at the remains of Thor’s damaged armor. Thor dismissed the armor with a thought. He could at least do that much. Besides, it would be nice to die with Loki’s hands on his skin. He reached out, trying to capture one of Loki’s hands, and was batted aside for his trouble.

“Save us all from heroes,” Loki hissed, throwing his pack down and digging through it. 

“You’re welcome,” Thor said, and meant it. He was beginning to feel cold, and grunted in protest when Loki grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him over onto his stomach. He caught a look at Loki’s face in that instant, his face white and his eyes wide and dark.

“The wound is deep.” Loki did _something_ to the injury then, something that burned Thor’s vision white with agony. His hands scrambled at the rock. “This is going to hurt,” Loki said, grim and warning, and then, before Thor could assure him that it would be fine, he--

Thor did not know what he did, only that it caught every nerve-ending on fire and sliced razors across the insides of his bones. Thor twisted up off of the ground; Loki had no chance to hold him down. He gripped at Loki’s wrist and shoulder and would have thrown him back, were he anyone else.

“There,” Loki said, after a moment, held tight, strands of his hair stuck across his face, his eyes still wide. “There. Breathe. Just breathe now.”

Thor dared a breath and then another. The pain eased with each exhalation. He sunk back, all at once, swallowing at the air, barely aware that he pulled Loki along, so that Loki sprawled half-across him. “Thank you,” he rasped, aware only by the ragged feel of his throat that he had screamed.

“It was nothing,” Loki said, but he sounded tired. Thor squinted up at him in the strange half-light of this new world. He was… quite close. Thor still held his wrist. Loki was tugging against his grip, twisting his arm a bit back and forth. 

Thor released his grip and rolled, ignoring the protest from his body. The wound yet remained. Whatever Loki had done had not closed it all the way, though he no longer felt carved open to his lungs. The ragged, ugly slashes yet bled down his back, but Thor could not lay, not with Loki sprawled across him. He pulled up a leg and curled his shoulders down, disguising the response of his body.

“Where are we?” he asked, when he felt he could trust his voice. Loki had not moved, sitting and catching his breath, but stirred then, standing and turning in a small circle.

“I don’t know it’s name,” Loki said. “I’ve never been here before. I could never get through the boundaries to this place in my time.”

Thor looked up at him, suddenly weary beyond the bearing of it. “You brought us to a realm you do not know?”

Loki glanced down to smile. Thor’s blood was on his hands and a few drops were splattered across his cheeks. The contents of his bag sprawled across the red clay around them, a testament to how hurried he had been to respond to the injury. He had dumped everything, Thor realized, dumped it all and scrambled to help.

“It was that or allow the grey keepers to consume us both,” he said. “I assumed you’d rather I not let that happen.”

Thor nodded and grimaced when the movement pulled at the wound on his back. The bleeding showed no signs of stopping. He could feel it running down his spine. Loki sighed, crouching beside him. “I can fix this,” he said. “If you promise not to grab me and drag me about again.”

“I will strive not to,” Thor said, turning his face away to avoid looking at Loki.

#

Healing magic had been the first thing Thor remembered Loki working to learn. Many of his other abilities had come easily to him, at least at first. Healing had not, but he had preserved, studying with Mother and her Ladies, until his skills were more than respectable.

And then he’d barely ever used them. Thor could not recall him ever spending time in the Healer’s Rooms, offering aid to the broken or the battered. But he had ever been there to set a bone or close an ugly gash when Thor needed it.

He closed the wound carved across Thor’s back with a few words of power and a twist of magic through the air. 

After, he gathered up his belongings and stood. “Can we still get to Valhalla from here?” Thor asked, looking around this new realm. Clouds hung low over it, but they did not look like normal clouds. They reminded Thor of the pall of smoke over a battlefield. Each inhalation did bring the smell of fire, along with the stench of old rot, bodies almost completely decayed.

The ground around them was alternately hard stone and red clay. Structures rose here and there, but they were all broken and in disarray. 

“I believe so,” Loki said, frowning with his eyes closed. “Valhalla _feels_ close. We just need to find a weak spot. I think there’s one this way.”

“Alright,” Thor said, trusting him. It was nice to have actual ground beneath their feet, but Thor found little else to like about this new realm, especially once they started coming upon the bones.

The first one broke beneath his foot with an itching little sound that ran unpleasantly up his back. He had thought they were merely coming to an area of grey, tumbled stones, but as the bone broke he realized his mistake.

They’d come to a road filled with bones.

Loki crouched, frowning at the clutter of the long dead. He did not touch any of the bones, merely looking them over. There were many that could only be the remains of people. Warriors, if the sword that Loki pulled free after a moment was anything to go by.

It was only when Thor saw the pommel, the familiar markings on it, that he finally realized where they were.

“This is an Aesir blade,” Loki said, frowning, as though Thor would not recognize it. He stood, walking deeper into the bones, and Thor knew what he would find, knew it before he said, “And these are--Thor, these are the bones of a pegasus.”

“Are they?” Thor asked, a void stretching out in his stomach. He wondered how many Valkyries lined this single path. He wondered if the bones of the woman Brunnhilde had loved were under his feet and swallowed back bile.

“They are,” Loki said, far further down the alley, stepping between bones lightly. No crunches came from beneath his boots. “This must be the Valkyries. We’ve found them. After all this time, wondering...” He looked up, his eyes narrowing as he gazed upon Thor. “You do not seem surprised to find them here.”

Thor could only stare. He had not expected to find his way to Hela’s realm of imprisonment, to this open grave. It left him feeling gutted. Loki cocked his head to the side. “You know what this place is.”

“I’ve heard of it.” Brunnhilde had spoken of it during the long five years Thor spent miserable on Midgard, on the nights she came to drink before giving up the habit entirely, pulling herself away from the peace at the bottom of the bottle with a strength he had not been able to find.

He did not blame her for offering the sweet and sour mead on those first nights, when the weight on his shoulders and in his head had felt too great to bear. Making the world blurry and far away had kept him alive, he thought, but it had been a terrible kind of life. Only good to keep him functioning so he could meet this purpose, so he could travel here, looking for all he had lost and finding this death instead.

“What happened here?” Loki’s voice startled him from the dark drift of his thoughts. “Everyone knows the Valkyries went missing, but I never imagined…” He gestured at the carnal yard around them, Aesir and pegasus bones mixed alongside one another, broken and left to rot where they fell.

Thor shook his head. “I cannot tell you,” he said. “Someday you will find out on your own.”

“I’m getting tired of hearing that.”

Thor closed his eyes. He did not want to think about sending Loki back to his own time. He did not want to think about all the knowledge Loki must have gleaned already, his sharp mind ferreting away at all that he saw. 

“We need to give them a pyre,” he said, because they did. Regardless of all else, these fallen warriors deserve their proper death rites, long delayed though they be. They deserved that much, at least, for their sacrifice in one of his father’s many follies.

“Alright,” Loki said, his easy agreement drawing a quick flash of suspicion in Thor’s mind. But Loki only looked concerned when Thor glanced across at him. He was younger, Thor had to remember, barely a man. He had been more ready to agree at this age. “There’s a courtyard up here. We can gather the bodies there.”

#

It was a brutal, unforgiving task. They cleared the courtyard from rubble and refuse. The work took hours. Time passed, in Hela’s realm, as it had not in the grey ways. A weak, watery sun passed overhead, only sometimes visible through the halo of smoke around this world. It set without fanfare, leaving a chill in the air.

Loki placed ghost lights around the courtyard and down the paths through the city, pale, green globes that reflected off the bones and fragments of armor. Thor passed from one stretch of light to the next, bearing the bones of the dead in his arms to the center of the courtyard.

So many had died in this horrible world. At first Thor thought perhaps there were dozens. By the end of the second day, he had revised the estimate to hundreds. The smell of decay filled his nose and throat. Filth smeared across his armor. There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink but sour water that Loki slapped out of his hand when he raised some to his mouth, cautiously.

The bitter work took the best part of four days. By the end of it, they had gathered all the fallen Valkyries and their steeds, arranging the bones and armor in the courtyard. Thor stared at the neat pile, the familiar ache in his chest spreading, arrested, all at once, when Loki reached out and touched his arm.

He turned away from the bones. Loki’s skin was smeared with filth, his hair pushed back and lank. He looked wan and tired. He squeezed Thor’s arm, his eyes shining, and said, “Send them on their way.”

Thor nodded, looking up to the sky. The smoke blew away, finally, moved by the force of the brewing storm that climbed up through the atmosphere. Electricity crackled in the air but no rain fell. Thor held it back, reaching out for the heat at the center of the storm and bringing it down into their pyre.

The dried bones and the dead trees ignited in a white flash. Buffeting heat blew off of the pyre. Loki flinched a little, and Thor shifted, moving in front of him as ash swirled through the air, stinging sparks falling against their skin and hair.

Thor watched it burn, hearing the snap of bones, feeling the fresh grief, until Loki pulled on his arm and drew him away, down one of the newly emptied streets. They walked in silence, past the last of the green ghost lights.

Loki did not make more. He didn’t need to. The blaze at their back reflected off the smoke and storm clouds above, turning the world a bloody red, providing plenty of light to see.

#

They walked through the ruins of Hela’s world for two further days, nearly past the limits of Thor’s endurance. But he did not want to stop here, to bed down and sleep in this dead place, not when they must surely be so close to Valhalla.

Loki did not complain about the pace for a long time, merely growing quieter as the hours dragged down at them and they left the pyre in the distance. He had not spoken in so long that, when he finally said, “Ah, there,” Thor almost did not understand the words. He nearly walked into Loki’s back when Loki drew to a sudden stop.

Loki smiled up at him when Thor braced a hand on his side, stabilizing them both. He looked younger when he was tired, and he already looked too young. He drew his knife from the sheath, grimacing down at the filth across his palm, and Thor caught his wrist. “Valhalla is through here?”

“No,” Loki said, looking at Thor’s hand and slowly up to his face. “No, this leads to the path that leads to Valhalla. Close to the border, as near as I can tell.” He shrugged.

Thor sighed. He had not expected the journey to the world of the dead to be easy. But a part of him had hoped it might not be this difficult. “Is the blood necessary?”

Loki gave him a look that appeared deeply unimpressed, brought his free hand to the blade, and sliced down across his palm. This time, Thor was prepared for the blinding light and the unpleasant pressure as they stepped through the portal, finally leaving Hela’s world behind.

When his vision came back, he found they stood on a wide flood plain, beside the banks of a roaring river that stretched to the far horizon. He jerked in a small circle, startled by the clear, open sky above and the landscape stretching around them. It was… almost beautiful. And the water looked perfect, calling to him. He felt filthy and had for too long. 

“Damnation,” Loki hissed, wrapping his hand harshly with a dirty bandage, “I’d hoped we’d come out on the other side.”

“Of the river?” Thor asked, his gaze drawn back to the crystal clear water. He crouched beside it, stretching out his hands to plunge them in, and Loki cried out in alarm, grabbing him around the shoulders and yanking him backwards, unexpectedly enough to tumble Thor over.

“Are you mad?” Loki demanded, as Thor blinked up at him; his eyes were wild, his hair hung down around them. Thor shut his eyes, turning his face to the side.

“What?” he asked. “I only wanted to wash off.”

Loki laughed shakily, sitting down heavily beside him, slouching forward over his knees and hanging his head. “Not in _that_ river. That isn’t water. Do you know nothing of this place?”

“No,” Thor said, content, for the moment, to lay across the river bank. “What is it, if it isn’t water?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said, gesturing towards the water. “Some kind of miniscule crystal, or a form of energy or… I don’t know. But it will slice through to your bones. You cannot touch it.”

Thor stared up into the blue sky. “How did you find that out?”

Loki swallowed. His voice sounded far away when he said, “The hard way. We’ll have to go back, find another entrance to the grey ways, and travel around it that way.”

Thor grimaced and sat up, eying the distance across the river. “No, we won’t.”

Loki scoffed. “We will. There’s a bridge farther down, but it’s guarded. None of the living are allowed to pass.”

Thor stood, holding out a hand to Loki, who took it after a moment, making a surprised sound when Thor pulled him closer. “What are--”

The lightning carried them to the other side. They landed with a crack of sound and a scattering of stones, Loki’s fingers clenching into his armor even as his feet touched the ground once more. Thor found a smile to offer in the face of Loki’s wide-eyed expression. “There,” he said, remembering to release his hold after a moment. “I told you we didn’t need to go back.”

“How did you do that?”

Thor shrugged, leaning his axe against his shoulder. “I have learned some things since I was the foolish boy you know. Are we far from Valhalla now?”

“Closer than we were,” Loki said, taking that as his cue to step forward, taking the lead once more. “He’s--you were not so foolish.”

“I was,” Thor said, sure about that if he was sure about nothing else. Loki cut him a sideways look, something measuring in his expression, and kept his silence.

#

The landscape they traveled across grew rugged. They followed no path. There were no paths to follow, though Loki seemed to know where he was going, leading Thor up and down hills, around outcroppings of stone, and past more bodies of water. This time Thor avoided them altogether. 

The days changed, dawn coming clear and crisp, leading to a scant few daylight hours before it sank once more, as though they were in late winter despite the green growth across this world. Twilight seemed to last for hours every evening, as the sun burned on the horizon.

They walked into the setting of the sun and into its rising as well, though Thor did not think they turned. In this way they made their strange progress for three days, before Loki stopped, smiled, and said, “Here we are.”

Thor looked around. They were in a copse of ash trees hung with mistletoe, their trunks covered in thick moss. “Valhalla?” he asked, hoping.

“Mm,” Loki said, stepping down into the midst of the trees, pulling the moss off of their trunks with his battered fingernails. “What are you waiting for?” he asked, gesturing Thor forward. There were symbols carved into the bark, Thor saw, then, strange, old glyphs that it hurt to look upon.

“I found these,” Loki said. “They were fallen into disrepair, but I renewed them. They allow… unmonitored entrance into Valhalla.”

“We are truly almost there?” Thor had almost expected that this was where the punchline landed, where Loki looked up and laughed and said that no, they were not at Valhalla and never would be.

“Yes. You remember what I told you, don’t you? The living aren’t supposed to enter Valhalla. The dead don’t take kindly to them. Are you sure your lover will be pleased to see us?”

“I’m sure.” Thor’s heart beat at his breast. He reached up, tugging at his hair, looking with dismay at the filth covering his clothing and skin. He glanced up at the sudden quiet, flushing to find Loki watching him with his head cocked to the side.

“I have never seen you worry about your appearance before,” Loki said.

“Then I hid it better than I thought.” That only got another long, slow look from Loki. He would never look satisfactory, he realized after a moment. And he did not want to wait any longer. He had already waited long enough. “Can we go through?”

Loki nodded, pulling aside the last of the moss. “Hold onto me tightly,” he said. “I’ve never tried to bring anyone along before.”

_five_

Thor had always anticipated one day to arrive in the lands of Valhalla, heralded by sweet horns into the arms of all the Aesir who had gone before him.

They arrived in Valhalla unnoticed, in an empty field of long, sweet grasses that stretched to the horizon, where Thor heard the crash of waves and smelled the salt of the sea. Far in the distance he could hear shouts and cries, exultant and not for him.

Beside him, Loki swayed, shaking aside Thor’s drifting thoughts. He steadied Loki, who cast him a look, somewhere between grateful and abashed.

Overhead, birds burst into flight, startled by their arrival. They looked… almost familiar, but far more real than any bird Thor had seen in the lands of the living. They put off a light all on their own, and their cries were sweeter than any bird’s cries he’d ever heard.

“This way,” Loki said, and moved for the nearest patch of trees. “We can’t remain in the open. And there’s a small stream near here, if my memory serves.”

“A stream?” Thor asked, distracted by the realm around them. It was shocking, somewhere deep inside, to realize that they had reached Valhalla and it did not disappoint a single one of his expectations. The air tasted sweet, the sun felt warm on his skin, the world stretched, fulsome and beautiful all around.

Loki made a satisfied little sound, ducking behind some trees and gesturing to, yes, a stream burbling through the woods, in a bed lined with pebbles. The water was so clear that Thor could see each of the brightly colored stones in the bottom. It radiated cold, even on this warm day. He was certain that it would taste sweet, more refreshing than any water that had ever passed his lips.

“You wanted to clean yourself up,” Loki said. “Move quickly. We have limited time here. And, please, do not drink the water.”

Thor knelt by the stream, plunging his hands into the water and finding it, yes, briskly cold. He bent and splashed water across his face, scrubbing at the accumulated filth gathered across his skin, his beard, his hair. Loki stood beside him, facing outward. Keeping watch.

His unspoken sentry hurried Thor along. He stood after a moment, shaking his hands off. He refreshed his armor - it had seemed pointless when constantly surrounded by more filth and rot - and looked down at his body. He looked _almost_ himself, if changed.

When his Loki had last seen him, he had not yet born these fading white hairs at his temples or scattered through his beard. They’d only appeared after his service to the witch, and he wondered if she had not taken more than she said. He had new scars, but his Loki had not flinched at the terrible ruin of his eye, so surely he would not dread a few fresh injuries.

“You look fine,” Loki said, tossing a rock into the stream and disrupting Thor’s image before he could stare at it yet longer. “Very dashing.”

Thor glanced at him, a thrum of something familiar singing through his veins. He cleared his throat and asked, “Are you…?”

Loki sighed and snapped his fingers, cleanliness rippling down from his head to his feet. “I saw no reason to bother before,” he said, when Thor raised an eyebrow at him. “Come quickly now. We have to find your lover. There are several places they could be. We’ll check the great hall first.”

Thor frowned. “I don’t know that he’ll be there.” He could not imagine his Loki spending eternity in the great hall, passing the hours surrounded by warriors and their ilk.

Loki hummed. “Perhaps not. But the warriors won’t be there now, they’ll be out hitting things with swords and hammers somewhere. So, we’ll look there for your lover now, where we’re unlikely to be seen, and then we’ll move on. But first...”

He stretched a hand out and rested two fingers against Thor’s forehead. A wave of cool energy flowed out from his touch, tingling across Thor’s skin, sliding inside his nose and mouth, spreading down below his armor. “What are you doing?” Thor asked, shivering as the heat of the day grew distant and the colors of the world faded.

“Hiding you,” Loki said, taking his hand away and shaking it out. He looked faded as well, like an old hologram nearly the end of its power cycle. He closed his eyes and color spread back into his flesh, working from the top of his head downward, until he was the only thing that looked real in the world. “Hiding us,” he amended. “From the dead. Now, let’s go.”

#

Loki led them slowly through Valhalla, keeping to the trees and the shadows even with the glamour over their skin. Thor disliked walking through the faded world, all his initial joy fled. With the glamour over his skin it felt like a dead world and he could not shake the chill in his bones.

Still, they went ignored when they passed a band of warriors, none of whom Thor recognized, so he could not complain. “We must be close,” Loki murmured as the warriors past. They had been eating and carrying horns of mead along with them. Loki flashed a smile over his shoulder and crept forward, over one more hillock.

He stopped at the crest, taking in a breath and gesturing across. A valley waited before them and, rising on the other side, at the top of a taller hill, was a large hall, a shape that looked old and new at the same time. It did not look much like Asgard, this long hunting lodge with no windows and only one great door, but it was constructed of familiar materials; the mother-of-pearl of the walls caught the light, the gold of the door shimmered in the sweet sun.

It was beautiful, Thor recognized, as they wove their way towards it, covered with markings that told out the stories of countless warriors - only some of which he knew. He could not focus on discerning them, his pulse racing distracting and fast under his skin, his stomach clenched hard within his gut.

Surely his Loki would not be here. Not in this warrior’s hall. Not if he could help it. Surely they would have to wander yet farther into this realm. He flexed his fingers in and out, his gaze drifting sightless across the patterns as they made their final approach, circling towards the door.

He knew he should tell the Loki with him to stay back. It was time to come up with an excuse, a reason that he could come no closer. He opened his mouth, eyes on the door, and froze to a stop as it opened.

No one should have been there. All the warriors were out, likely with Odin - though Odin had not died in battle, had not - 

A man stepped from the great hall, clad in dark leathers, hair a black tumble, skin alabaster pale, legs long as he sat upon the finely carved steps and leaned back.

The vision struck Thor in place, freezing him to stone. It hurt more than he’d thought it would, more than it had to first see the younger version of Loki, more than every explanation, more than each trial they’d passed through. He wanted to cry out, but his throat clenched shut tight and his jaw would not unlock.

Loki - _his_ Loki - took a bite from the apple he held in his hand. And then, though they had made no sound, the younger Loki stood just as still beside Thor, he glanced in their direction, a frown crossing his expression.

“Hello?” he asked, standing in a smooth, achingly familiar motion. 

To hear his voice again was a sweet agony. It stabbed at Thor’s heart, raking hot coals into his mouth. It had no such effect on the younger Loki, who took a step forward, shimmering abruptly, and said, “Please, don’t cry out.”

Thor’s Loki blinked, no great expression of shock flashing across his face at the appearance of another version of himself. He looked himself up and down and then, his gaze drifting to the side, he said, slowly, “There’s someone else with you.”

“Yes,” the younger said, and Thor felt something like ice move across his skin, like the cold of space, replaced by true warmth, the warmth of the sun that he had not been able to feel while covered with the glamour. All the smells were suddenly sharper, the sounds easier to hear. His Loki snapped into focus, as though seen clearly, instead of through thick glass.

“Thor,” his Loki said, blinking rapidly, taking the steps down towards them all in a rush. The movement turned Thor’s body back to flesh from stone. He took a lurching step forward as his Loki reached the base of the steps, his expression some shattered thing.

Thor swept him up, desperate to hold him, to pull him close, fitting hand to jaw to tilt his face, to lean down and kiss his mouth. Loki’s fingers clenched around his head, around his ribs, anchoring to him with fierce, desperate strength, and Thor could have died then, in that moment, happily.

His Loki shoved him away, instead, mouth reddened and hair wild, his expression fierce as he snapped, “What are you doing here? You are both alive! Do you _know_ what will happen if you are discovered?”

“We know,” the younger said, and he sounded blank, flat. As though his voice were coming from far away. Thor could not look at him. Had not been able to look at him throughout this reunion. 

“Then why--”

“He didn’t care,” the younger said. “And I was curious.” He stepped close enough then that Thor did see him, the tilt of his head and the narrowing of his eyes as he assessed his older self. They were of a height, Thor noticed as his mind cataloged all of their similarities and differences, the neatness of the younger’s hair compared to the loose fall of his Loki’s, smile lines, scars.

Their eyes were the same.

His Loki shook Thor a little. “You didn’t--you must leave here. Quickly. Before you are found out.”

“No,” Thor said, finally finding his voice, though it was a strange, hoarse thing. “Or, yes, we will leave, but you must come with us. I’ve come to take you with us.”

He felt the younger Loki watching him, over his Loki’s shoulder. His Loki blinked and then shook his head, huffing an exasperated laugh. “I can’t go with you.” His expression softened, then, all at once, the clench of his fingers eased to something else painful. “Thor,” he said, quiet. “I am dead. You know this.”

“We’ll find a way,” Thor said, shaking his head, needing to make him understand. “Everyone said we could not come here, either, and yet here we are. Between the two of you,” he gestured back towards the younger Loki, “you will come up with something and we will take you back to the world of the living.”

His Loki stared at him for a moment and then looked away, to his younger self. They regarded one another, matched green gazes locked. His Loki said, slowly, “I cannot leave.”

The younger Loki shrugged. “I told him so.”

“But you brought him here, anyway.” His Loki sounded more puzzled than chiding, but there _was_ chiding there, in his tone. He still held Thor’s arms and his touch felt real. It did not feel like the grip of a dead man.

“He insisted that we try. And I thought I would find out how I’d died, along the way.”

Thor flinched. “I never said--”

“And would you like to know?” his Loki interrupted, releasing him then, turning to square with his younger self, his head tilting to one side.

The younger wetted his bottom lip, cutting a sharp glance towards Thor. There was something almost hunted in his expression. Something that hadn’t been there before. “Yes,” he said. “And I want to know what’s--he came here for you? Truly? I thought…” He shook his head. “I want to know what happened to Mother and Father. I want to know how everything went wrong.”

Thor frowned. Loki was not supposed to know how he’d died. He wasn’t even supposed to know that he had died. He was finding out far too much. Thor took a step forward, needing to draw them both back on track, surely if they put their heads together they could discover a way--

“Very well,” his Loki said, his mouth thinning into a smile devoid of amusement. His Loki moved then, faster than a thought. He put his hands on either side of the younger’s face, gripping tight and pulling their foreheads together. He said, before Thor could grab him back, as the space where their skin touched shimmered as though with heat or great cold, “I apologize for the pain.”

And then he squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his jaw, as his younger self jerked in his hold. Thor grabbed them, one hand on each, and found them as cold as ice. He dared not tear them apart, even as the younger’s eyes rolled back, and he slumped, held upright only by the older’s hands around his face.

Thor’s Loki gasped then, jerking back and panting hard. The younger collapsed towards the ground. Thor caught him, spotting a smear of wet red below his nose and from his eyes, looking with alarm at his Loki to demand, “What did you do?”

His Loki wiped at his own nose and laughed, sharply, at the red that came away on his fingers. “We still bleed here,” he said. “Isn’t that ridiculous? This place--”

“What did you do?” Because the younger Loki shook in his arms, violent tremors that raced through his body. If he died - if Thor had to hold _another_ Loki in his final moments - if this venture ended not with returning Loki from Valhalla but delivering the younger to its fields and halls - if - 

“Peace,” his Loki said, crouching then and placing his hand on the younger’s forehead. The tremors stilled. “I gave him what he needed. It is all I can give you.”

“I don’t understand,” Thor said, the words bursting out almost like a plea.

“That’s alright,” the younger said, slurring the words just a little. His eyes had turned bloody, Jotun red. “I think I will.” And then he twisted out of Thor’s arms and vomited on the ground, the clear liquid stained bloody red.

Thor cast his Loki an alarmed look, and Loki only shook his head. The younger spat and pushed to his feet, Thor rising with him. The younger Loki stepped away from him, putting space between them, breathing hard when he asked, “What do you ask for in return for what you’ve given me?” 

Thor’s Loki cut a glance away, towards Thor, left far behind whatever it was they were discussing. He said, looking back to his younger self, “You’ll know what I wish when the time comes. And now you must go. It is too dangerous for you to stay any longer.”

Thor shook his head, looking desperately at his Loki. “No, no, we came all this way to bring you back. Surely you must have some plan, some ploy to get out of here, I know you.”

His Loki smiled at him, then, gentle and all the worse for that. Loki was not the gentle sort. “You do,” he said. “You always have. But the dead can’t come back, Thor.”

“I don’t care about the laws,” Thor said, needing to make him understand. Needing him to grasp that nothing mattered but returning him.

Loki tilted his head, his eyes narrowing before a shocked pleasure broke across his expression. “You don’t, do you?” He shifted closer, as though needing to more closely inspect Thor’s eyes. His breath snagged and he rocked up, kissing Thor hard and fierce, before pulling back. “That’s… But it doesn’t matter how you feel about the laws. It is… beyond law. If I leave here I will simply be gone.”

Thor shuddered at the thought of that. “No,” he said. “No, there has to be a way.” But he could see that there was not in the green of Loki’s eyes, in the shrug of his shoulders, and the unhappy line of his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” his Loki said.

“No,” Thor said, but he was arguing with the universe and he knew it.

“You must go now. The day is drawing to a close. They will return soon and they will not be so understanding as me about your presence here.”

“Let them find me,” Thor said, across the gulf of emptiness within his chest. If he could not bring Loki back, if he could truly fix absolutely _nothing_ of all the wrongs that had been done then at least he could remain. “Let them--”

“No,” his Loki said, sharp, pulling at him now. “No, you don’t understand. If you are found-- Thor, you will not be allowed to remain and you will not be allowed to return. Do you hear me? I cannot leave here, but if they find you, you will not be able to come back, do you--”

“I understand,” Thor gritted out the words, the urgency in his Loki’s voice cutting him to the bone. He heard the horns of the returning warriors, sweet and clear through the air. Something about them called to him, full of an appeal that spoke to his soul.

The younger Loki stepped forward. He kept his head high, but the effort cost him and it showed the tears on his cheeks, freezing to ice as they slid across his skin. He did not reach out to Thor, only staring at his older self with nothing readable in his eyes.

“You know what you must do,” Thor’s Loki said, shifting his weight, impatience beginning to creep into his movements.

Thor opened his mouth, and the younger said, with a ruined voice, “I do.” He turned, then, and said, “We must go.”

Thor heard laughter carried to them on the rising wind and the first stirrings of voices. Still he delayed, staring at his Loki, the hole in his chest growing deeper. “Loki,” he said, reaching a hand out, and his Loki turned away, urgency crossing his expression.

“You must go _now_ ,” he said. “I will delay them as long as I can.”

“Loki!” He heard the pleading in his own voice and hated it. No, no, this could not have been what he did all this for, this could not be the end, to see him for scant moments and then be sent away. It was not worth it, it was not--

Loki glanced over his shoulder, mouth pulled up in a smile that did not touch his eyes. “I will wait for you,” he said, his tone gentling. He shifted his gaze to his younger self, his expression moving to pity, for the briefest of instants. “Good luck.”

Thor took a jerking step towards him, caught back by the younger Loki’s hand. “Come on,” the boy said, urgently, pulling at him. “We can delay no longer.”

“I must--”

The sharp strike across his cheek startled him. He turned to gaze at the younger Loki, glaring up at him with tears still frozen to his cheeks to hiss, “We lack the time for this foolishness. He cannot go. You cannot stay. Not now. Come with me now or you will never see him again.”

Thor gaped at him for a moment, hearing his Loki’s voice raised to call out greetings, and jerked out a sharp nod. He allowed the younger Loki to lead him off into the golden fields and to the woods beyond, tracking not where he placed his feet or how quickly they moved. The world blurred around the hollowed shell of him and the blur was not as welcoming as he’d wished.

_six_

They did not speak again in Valhalla. They did not speak when Loki tore open the soft place between the realms and led them back into the copse of ash trees. They did not speak at the river of sharp things, Thor merely grabbed Loki and carried him across, his heart and his thoughts back in Valhalla.

He was aware he wept, but only distantly, the tears coming unbidden as Loki took him back, back into Hela’s realm, still lit red on the horizon from the memory of the great pyre of the Valkyries.

“Why have we returned here?” Thor asked, his voice scrapped raw and terrible. He could have passed the rest of his existence without ever crossing the borders to this land again.

“We must take the exact path we used to enter to return,” Loki said, not looking at him. He’d kept ahead of Thor since they left Valhalla. The only time they had touched had been when crossing the river, and he had pulled away harshly afterwards. “Or else we will wander lost forever. This way.”

They walked in silence once more - it was the longest Thor could ever remember traveling with Loki without hearing him speak - no sound but their breathing and the crunch of their footsteps until Loki stopped, abruptly, in the overhang of some ruined structure.

“I can go no further,” he said and sat where he stood, leaning his shoulder against the wall, and it was only then that Thor got a true look at him. Exhaustion carved into his face, leaving behind dark smears under his eyes. His hands trembled as he pulled his legs up, dropping his forehead against his knees.

Thor stared at him for a moment, his chest full of broken glass, and nodded, though Loki was not looking at him. He said, “I will look for wood.”

When he returned, laden with such scraps as he could find, Loki had not moved. It was, Thor realized, a surprise. He’d expected to come back to find Loki gone. Loki ran when he was upset. Thor had learned that, over and over again.

But he remained. Thor built a fire, hands moving automatically to bring some warmth and light to their makeshift camp site. He settled back when the fire caught, leaning against the wall, close to Loki but not touching. He stared into the flames, watching the slow consumption of the wood, feeling the agony spreading through him, the bitter taste of yet one more failure staining every cell in his body.

He should not have come here. He should have known from the start that his attempt was doomed to failure, like all else he had ever tried. What a fool he’d been, to imagine that he could steal back something from the universe that had taken all from him. What a--

“You did not kiss him like a brother,” Loki said, startling Thor from his quiet contemplation over the fire’s flames. In the flickering light of the fire, marked with exhaustion, bloody from whatever Thor’s Loki had done to him, he looked almost entirely as he had, before Thor lost him. “The other one.”

Thor flinched. He’d known this conversation must occur, but had enjoyed pretending it might not. He looked away, out to the darkness of the night. “No,” he agreed.

Loki unwound slowly from the knot he’d pulled his limbs into and poked at the fire, stirring sparks into the air. “When did… that happen?”

It would be like Loki to try to get the shape of a thing by asking questions all around it, creeping inward from the edges. Thor unlocked his jaw, fighting off the suffocating pressure of aching memories. “Shortly before I lost him.”

A log in the flames popped. “The other you. The you from my time. He doesn’t feel that way about me.”

Thor remembered being young, sometimes. In lucky moments when the weight of the present did not rest so heavily on his shoulders, he remembered those long, sweet years on Asgard, before everything went wrong and fell apart. He remembered the presence of Loki, ever by his side, and shook his head. “He does,” he said, watching Loki’s shoulders go stiff. “He only hides it, desperately and deeply.”

Loki frowned into the fire, eyes narrow and full of confused doubt. “That cannot be true,” he said.

Thor grimaced, knowing he was revealing all the secrets of his past self and suspecting, somewhere deep down, that he ought not, and no longer caring. Had he not asked enough of Loki? Was he not required to make some repayment? If a few answers he should not have were to be the price, Thor would pay it. Why not? “I have loved you for as long as I can remember, though I tried not to. I was just a fool then.” He laughed, bitter and barking. “I am a fool even now.”

Loki had not looked _truly_ shocked when Thor told him he was from the future, when he learned of Odin’s death, when he saw himself in Valhalla. He looked it in that moment, wide-eyed and shaken, terribly so, before he tucked that expression away and turned his face aside.

He said, “I--that’s--so it was you who--?” He gestured between them, wearing the expression of a man digging into a wound to clean it, enduring the pain because it must be endured. 

Thor thought of his broken future. He wondered how much he could change with this Loki, how many small things could be adjusted, if he could not ease certain hurts, give his younger self a gift. He said, remembering Loki in his quarters on the refugee ship, solid and there, there as he had always been, save for those terrible years when they were estranged, that old want growing beyond his ability to restrain it. 

“Yes,” he said, staring into memory. “It was I.” It had been he who crossed the room, who drew Loki close, who kissed his mouth and found him pliant.

He had not guessed that knowing love would spark such a loyalty in Loki’s chest. He wondered, sometimes, if he had never acknowledged the tangle of want and need between them, if he had kept the familiar distance, if Loki would have allowed Thanos to kill Thor and escaped with his own life, instead.

“You did not care that we are brothers?” Loki asked, drawing Thor from the dark paths of his memories, finally working his way into the question he must have been courting the entire conversation, probing to see how deep the injury went. “He did not?” 

The question had too many answers. Thor had wanted long before knowing they were not of blood relation, treacherous wants he’d done his best to shut aside. He’d grown less cautious after the revelation of Loki’s heritage, but even then…

Even then, he had fought and struggled against them, until such a time as it had seemed a cruel joke to deny even the possibility of joy for some foolish jape of Odin’s that neither of them had been party to.

But answering the question would tell Loki of the future - his future, directly. Thor had intended to avoid that. Just as he’d intended to bring his Loki back from the grave. Just as he’d intended to return this Loki back to his own time as quickly as possible.

His intentions lay in shattered pieces around his feet.

And would it not be better to ease some hurts if he could? Did not Loki deserve some reparation, for all Thor had asked of him? Thor scrubbed at his face, aware of the silence across the fire as Loki waited for him to find his words. He said, finally, into that hungry quiet, “I do not know if I would have cared or not, after losing all else. But… but we had learned certain things, by then.”

“Certain things,” Loki echoed, his tone flat. “What did you learn?”

Thor stared out into the night, dark and spotted here and there with other, distant fires. He stood and came around the fire to crouch by Loki, who’s eyes widened, color running out of his face. Thor took his hands, even though he tried to jerk them away, feeling the tension beneath his skin.

Surely it could not be worse for him to find out this way, than the way he had. Surely he would thank Thor for gentling the explanation, someday. Certainly Thor could do at least this for him. He said, carefully, “You were - are - not Odin’s trueborn son.”

Loki tried to yank his hands away again, more vigorously. Thor held him, worried, as Loki’s expression shifted through a hundred emotions before going blank, that he would flee away to some dangerous location. Loki stared at him, but his eyes did not seem to see. He snapped, “That’s - you’re lying - mother would _never_ -”

“She didn’t,” Thor hurried to say, Loki’s leap to their mother’s defense stabbing into him. That pair had always loved one another, true and deep. He remembered jealousy at their closeness, the easy way they understood one another, even after Loki’s first betrayals.

Loki frowned, “But-”

Better to get this over quickly. Better to clean the wound thoroughly and all at once, to limit the risk of infection. “You remember hearing of the long wars between the Aesir and the Jotun?”

Loki blinked, taken off his guard. It was rare that Thor had ever managed that. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“It--at the end of the last of the great campaigns,” Thor said, still holding Loki’s hands, though they balled to fists in his grip. “As Odin took the victory and left to return victorious to Asgard, he found an abandoned child in the snow--”

“No,” Loki said, his gaze snapping to Thor, focusing, horror in his eyes, as though he understood all at once, as though he could look into Thor’s mind and see what must come next. 

“--a Jotun child, and when he reached out, the child changed--”

“No,” Loki _begged_ , jerked against Thor’s grip, blinking his shining eyes rapidly, tears running from them anyway, unheeded down his cheeks, each one a knife in Thor’s breast.

“--and he brought you home, Loki, Loki, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He pulled Loki closer, not knowing what else to do, holding him as he wept, the tears coming violently, terribly excised from his body. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

#

“How did the other one find out?” Loki’s voice was hoarse. It was the first time he had spoken in at least an hour. Of course questions brought back his words, the need to understand and gather yet more knowledge.

Thor kept staring up at the stars, Loki held close to him, coiled tense, each muscle knotted. “It is not a happy story,” he said. “And I’ve already told you more than I should have.”

Loki barked a laugh, sharper, more familiar. “We are not in a happy story,” he said. “In case you have not noticed.” Thor closed his eyes, flinching. Perhaps Loki’s life would have yet had a few more years of joy, if Thor had not stolen him away. “Please, Thor.”

He had ever been weak to such pleas. He swallowed. “I--I do not know all of it,” he warned. He had missed much of the events, told what happened secondhand by Odin, who’s explanations he was no longer inclined to believe, and in passing mentions by Loki. 

“Tell me.”

Thor turned his face against Loki’s hair. Embracing him thus, it was so hard to remember he was not Thor’s Loki. Thor bit at his tongue to remember. “You--Odin knew he would be falling into an Odinsleep soon,” Thor started, feeling his way into the story. “He decided, before he did, that he would name me successor.”

Loki stiffened yet further within his arms. “Yes,” Thor said, with a grim laugh, “you did not like it then, either. And you were right not to. I was a callow boy. Spoiled. Used to getting my own way. Untested and selfish. You decided to show Odin I was all those things. You worked with the Jotun to do it, to arrange an attack on Asgard--”

“No,” Loki said, jerking hard enough that Thor loosened his hold, at least enough for Loki to look at him. “No, I would not--” He cut off, staring into Thor’s expression and some new grief touched his eyes. He looked as though he would be ill. “Was anyone hurt?”

Thor blinked, taken off guard by the question. “I…” he swallowed, a fresh shame in his own mouth. “I don’t recall,” he said. “But my pride was stung. And when you suggested that we strike back at Jotunheim, I was happy to agree. So we went, and I made a fool of myself, and Odin… sent me in exile, to Midgard. While I was there you and Odin quarrelled and you… learned of your history. I do not know exactly how. You never told me.

“All I know is that it made you furious. You killed Laufey. You tried to destroy Jotunheim itself. The Bifrost was broken to prevent it. And then you… you fell into the stars, rather than stay. It was the first time I thought you dead.”

Loki breathed fast and shallow. There were spots of color high in his wet cheeks. He had not blinked for an age. He said, voice strange and empty, “But he was not. He--how was he not?”

Thor shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “You -- he would not speak to me of it.” 

Loki made a sound, more a sob than a laugh, looking down at the ground, up to the stars, back to Thor. “And _then_ you took him for a lover? After such madness?”

Thor stared at him, all the painful memories dug up once more, returning to Midgard, discovering Loki in crude captivity. He did not know what he would have done if they had been left uninterrupted on that cliff face. Certainly he had _wanted_ , certainly the solid proof of Loki’s survival had raced through him, certainly he had imagined ripping the bonds off of Loki’s wrist and pressing him against the side of the cliff. But he had done nothing, except behave as a fool yet again. He shook his head. “No.”

“No,” Loki said. “No? There is more? Worse?” Thor could not look at him. “What did he do?”

“Loki--”

And Loki was out of his hold, then, sliding away from his grip somehow, to stand over him, glowering against the backdrop of the stars, snapping, “Tell me!”

Thor stood, more worried Loki would disappear than anything else in that moment. He reached out, cautiously, “I have said too--”

Loki gave a cry of frustration, turning away, and Thor grabbed his arm, half-expecting to meet nothing but air. But Loki did not yet have all the skill he would. Thor caught flesh, jerking him back, Loki snarling and reaching up to strike at him, until Thor wrapped both arms around him and held him tight, panting into his hair.

Loki watched him from the corners of his eyes, twisting his head and freezing when he realized how close their faces were. Loki ground out, “Stop. Stop, I’m _not him_.”

Thor released him as though scalded, stumbling back a step, pressing the back of his hand across his mouth, hating the reaction of his body to their closeness. Shame burned sour down his throat. “I’m--”

“I don’t want your apologies,” Loki snapped, still there, still there, thank all that was good. He let out a broken laugh. Thor could hear him pacing. He did not dare look over, horrified of what might still show on his expression. “Just--just tell me. Tell me everything.”

“Alright,” Thor said, swallowing all the doubt and every voice in his head yelling that he ought not. He could see no way to refuse it. Not after all else he had done. “Alright, as you wish.”

#

Loki listened in silence to Thor’s explanation of his time in Thanos’s service - there was not much to tell. Thor’s Loki never spoke much of it, dismissing even Thor’s questions about the scars he brought with him out of those dark days.

He listened to the tales of his time in captivity, of the attack of the dark elves. But when Thor spoke of Mother’s death, the words choking in his throat, Loki turned his face to the side, and said, “Stop.”

Thor swallowed. His throat ached from speaking for so long. He watched Loki over the flames. Loki kept the fire between them, still, and Thor took the distance as the warning it was, staying well back. He attempted to offer no comfort. He asked for none in return.

“Alright,” Loki said, eventually, his voice some shredded thing. “Tell me the rest.”

He did not ask Thor to stop at the mention of his second supposed death. Thor did not mention his long period of grieving, the strand of Loki’s hair he’d worn in his braids, Jane’s upset with him when he could not just… move on, the strain that had ended that relationship.

He stumbled a bit over the explanation of Loki sending Odin away and taking his place. They had not spoken much of that, either, after it happened. Hela’s arrival had taken so much of the fury out of it, and by the time he had learned of all Odin’s lies - or perhaps not all of them, perhaps there were more still hidden - it had been difficult to feel much rage with Loki.

Odin had received no punishment for anything he had done. Nothing besides a scant few years of time spent on Midgard. Thor shook that thought aside and told him of Hela, their sister, her madness, the fall of Asgard.

“And you know the rest,” Thor said, shrugging, hoping to escape any mention of Thanos.

Loki frowned into the flames, his arms crossed over his chest, tightly. His hair hung in tangles. His mouth was pressed into a thin line. He hunched his shoulders over further and said, “No. No, I don’t, you did not say when you…” He flinched.

Thor looked away. “After--after Asgard burned,” he said. “On the ships that were to take us to Midgard.”

“Why then?” Loki sounded lost. “Why, after everything, would--”

“Because you stayed.” It had been no more complicated than that. If Loki had not fallen into the stars, if he had not pretended to die, if he had not initially stayed behind when Thor left for Asgard…. But he had not stayed, not any of those times, not until Asgard burned.

“Because _he_ stayed,” Loki corrected, sharp, and Thor closed his eyes, nodding and listening to the crackle of the flames. “Alright,” Loki said, finally. “And then how did he die?” Thor opened his eyes again, looking out into the beginnings of dawn. He said nothing. “Thor?”

“Please,” he said. “Please, do not make me tell you of this.”

For a moment, he thought Loki might spare him over. But Loki said, “I must know.”

Thor hung his head, shutting his eyes. What did any of it matter, anymore? He’d told Loki so much else… He swallowed convulsively, until he felt he could speak again, and said, “There was a madman. Named Thanos. He wanted to…” Thor frowned. “To destroy half of the universe. He wanted to use the Infinity Stones to do it. You took one, before Asgard burned, and had it on the refugee ship.”

He trailed off. The words did not want to come. Loki did not prompt him, did not move, or even appear to be breathing on the other side of the flames. “He found out, somehow,” Thor said, picking his way through the story. “He came for it. Laid waste to us. Threatened to kill me, if you did not give it to him.”

The world grew blurry. Thor struggled for breath through his tight throat. “And--and you did. And he killed you, anyway. I could not stop him.”

Thor bent his head. Wept. “This Thanos,” Loki said, some time later, his voice still flat. “What happened to him?” It was easier, somehow, to tell the rest. Of his failure on the battlefield, of the snap, of their second attack, five years later, the undoing of so much harm. Thor trailed off to a stop, finally, out of words and heartsick beyond the bearing of it.

He listened to the fire crackle, until Loki shifted around, and said, “I… thank you. For telling me.”

Thor nodded. “Do you want--do you have other questions?” He saw no reason, suddenly, not to answer. Let Loki do what he would with the knowledge. Thor was too tired to hold it close and quiet in his chest.

Loki said nothing, for so long that Thor looked over at him. Loki was staring into the flames, his expression unreadable. He finally, finally shook his head. “No,” he said, carefully, as though testing the word. “Not yet. I need to think about everything you said.”

Thor nodded and leaned his head back against the wall at his back, feeling the terrible need to say _something_ and not knowing what it was.

#

Loki slept. Thor had not expected him to, but between one of Thor’s furtive looks at him and the next, he fell into dreams, all curled into a ball. Thor watched him sleep. He looked so young. Grief sick even in his sleep.

Thor swallowed the thickness in his throat, feeding another log into the fire, and leaned back to keep watch.

Nothing harassed them. He did not think Hela had let anything live in her realm when she left. Thor wondered what the would tell Brunnhilde about her sisters and winced at the thought. It was but one more burden he did not want to carry.

Still, he could not shake the thought of the conversation out of his head once it entered. It ate away at him, hopeless and frustrating, until Loki flinched across the fire.

Thor blinked at him, convinced something had gotten past his guard. But Loki’s eyes were still closed. His expression contorted as he flinched again. He cried out, sudden and sharp, and Thor jerked to his feet, crossing the space between them.

Loki made a soft sound, wet, hitching, and Thor knelt beside him. Memories battered at him. Nightmares had plagued his Loki, terrible dreams that woke him more nights than not. Loki twitched and cried out, and Thor could not watch any longer.

He touched Loki’s shoulder, gently, and murmured, “Sh, sh, you’re safe,” when Loki jerked to wakefulness, shouting.

Loki stared up at him, wide-eyed, disorientation written all over his features. “It was just a dream,” Thor said, and Loki pushed off his hand, twisted, and vomited.

Afterwards, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Thor stared at him, his pulse racing uncomfortably beneath his skin. “Are you--”

“We should go,” Loki said, stumbling inelegantly to his feet, looking away from Thor. His voice was raw. He crossed his arms tightly across his chest.

#

They traveled through Hela’s world, back through the ruined city, out the other side. Loki paused on the outskirts of the ruins, frowning. “We should sleep again,” he said. “Before we face the gray ways once more. My strength is…” He trailed off, shrugging.

“Alright,” Thor said, though he wanted to protest that they should leave at once. It seemed safer in Hela’s world that in the gray ways. At least nothing had attacked them there. They settled, Thor taking the first watch without any argument.

Loki woke screaming.

“Sh,” Thor said, falling to his knees by Loki’s side, gripping his shoulder, casting a look around the world, just in case some beast decided to appear. “Sh, sh, Loki, it’s alright!”

Loki shook his head harshly, pushing away at Thor, shoving up onto his hands, dry heaving, anything that would have remained in his stomach long emptied. His shoulders shook afterwards, as Thor crouched beside him, unable to determine what he could possible do.

“What did you dream?” he asked, when Loki spat down onto the red clay and rocked back to sit on his heels.

Loki looked over at him, exhaustion written across his features, his eyes wide and unfocusing. His hands were balled into fists and pressed against his stomach. His voice came out as a rasp. “His dreams,” he said.

Horror stabbed down into Thor’s chest. He shook his head. “You are imagining,” he said, “because I told you things I shouldn’t have, because--”

Loki laughed, the sound sharp and broken as glass. “No,” he said, standing and wavering only a little. “I am dreaming his dreams.” He reached up and touched his forehead, where Thor’s Loki had touched him. “He gave them to me.”

The cruelty of that took Thor’s breath for a moment. He said, “No.”

“Yes.” There was nothing pleasant in Loki’s smile. “Would you like to know what Thanos did to him, when he was first captured?” Loki’s expression blanked, save for a tremble across his mouth. “I could tell you.”

Thor shook his head. He said, “Why would he--why would he do that to you?”

Loki shrugged jerkily. “It was necessary,” he said, and spat down onto the ground again. “We should go.”

#

They did not speak in the gray ways and they did not stop. They heard the noises of the guardians, but managed to pass unprovoked. Thor almost regretted it. He thought he would very much like to kill something, but received no chance before Loki finally, finally, picked a place to carve into the air, opening a passage back to Midgard.

The lands of the living were warm, after the long passage in the dead chill between realms. The warmth did not touch Thor. He stood, frozen within and without, on the cliff overlooking the sea and did not see the beauty of the endless sky above or the crashing waves below.

He was aware, distantly, of Loki sinking to his knees, curling his shoulders forward, panting noisily. The sound of his distress drew Thor back into his thoughts, where he so little wanted to be. He blinked, crouching to ask, “Are you alright?”

Loki laughed, sharp, and Thor shivered because it was a laugh he’d heard before, but not until after Loki’s sojourn with the Chitauri, the laugh that said the entire universe was playing some grand trick specifically on Loki and that he had finally become aware of it, too late to avoid the punchline.

Thor touched his shoulder, and Loki jerked away from his touch, lifted his head, strands of his hair stuck to his cheeks, glancing up out of the corners of his eyes. “I will be,” he said. Loki was young, not precisely the same man who Thor had lost, but closer than he had been when they began their journey.

And the man Thor had lost was gone, truly gone. But there was yet _this_ Loki, who did not have to suffer as Thor’s Loki had. Thor could shield him from the worst of the tricks the universe had in store. He could… he could protect him, while making sure that the past played out as it had, he could be there, no one would question overmuch the interest of an old warrior in one of the princes of Asgard.

It would take another orb for him to return as well - they had only one left, one to send Loki home - but he could gladly put in another year of hard labor for the witch. It would be a small cost to pay.

Or they could stay the the current day, for a time. In the ruin of this future. He could teach Loki, keep him close. Loki had aged as slowly as the Aesir - perhaps slower, all truth being told - no one would notice overmuch if they delayed a century, or two, or even three, before returning to the past to play out history’s cruel dance.

Thor could not have what he’d lost. But perhaps he could have _that_. Loki stared up at him, gone wide-eyed and pale. He said, his voice small and quiet, “Thor?”

“Stay here,” Thor said, the words punching out of him. “I know you are angry, but stay here with me, at least for a while.”

“You know I am not him,” Loki said, searching his gaze, the words flat but not entirely cruel. Only tired.

“I know,” Thor said. “I--I do not wish you to be so. I only would have you stay. For a while. That’s all.”

He did not want to be alone again. Not so quickly. Loki nodded, after a moment, surprising Thor, who had thought he would need to bargain and plead, beg. “Alright,” he said. “For a while. I’m not ready to go back, anyway.”

Thor closed his eyes, squeezed them shut around the rush of relief, and dared speak no words for fear of what his voice would reveal. They stood there, on the lip of the cliff overlooking the sea. The sun rose, and Thor resented the warmth of it’s touch and the cries of the sea birds, gradually rising to obscure the ragged sound of Loki’s breathing.

_seven_

Thor did not know where to take Loki, when finally Loki stepped away from him. The fragile closeness that they’d shared gave him back the barest edge of hope. Loki knew, now, almost all of Thor’s sins. And he had not left. Perhaps his anger was fading already. Loki could be like that, his rages burning out quick and unexpected, as easy with forgiveness as he could be to take offense.

“You,” he started, glancing at Loki, dismissing the thoughts of _where_ they would go for a moment, “while we are in this time period, especially on Midgard, you should not...” He gestured. “You should not look like this.”

Loki looked down at himself. “I don’t look so much like him,” he said, frowning.

“Close enough to those who knew him,” Thor said, earning a sharp, sideways glance from Loki, who shrugged then.

“If you say so,” he said, his form changing in a blink, growing shorter and softer, to a form Thor had not seen for so many years. He only realized then how much Loki looked like Hela, perhaps with softer eyes and a more generous mouth and a jawline that reminded Thor much more of Mother. It was another barb, set against his flesh, but he felt so raw and shredded that the pain did not register fully. “Is this suitable?” Loki asked, her voice higher and sweet.

Thor nodded. He could think of no reason it would _not_ work. As far as he knew, none of the warriors on Midgard had ever been aware that Loki spent a fair portion of time in this feminine aspect. They would have no reason to suspect that she was anything but another Aesir woman.

“Let us go to this New Asgard you spoke of, then,” Loki said. “You need to rest, and I would like to see it.”

Thor nodded. The words reminded him of the exhaustion in his bones, heavy and growing heavier by the moment. The emptiness of unconsciousness appealed. 

He took Loki’s hand - soft and small - and took them to New Asgard, the bitter taste of failure following him across Midgard. They landed in the center of the town’s square, drawing a few exclamations of surprise from the Aesir and the Midgardians who had migrated into the town over the years.

Some of the Aesir had taken them for lovers, he knew. There had been weddings. He had attended them, but could not remember them as anything other than a blur, like so much else in the past years.

Loki looked around, taking in the buildings and the people, wide-eyed, as Brunnhilde approached them, smiling. “Thor!” she called, looking well. This place agreed with her, in a way it had not with him, bringing her the peace it stole from him. “We didn’t know you were coming. Or bringing a friend.”

Thor made himself smile at her. It was not as difficult as he anticipated. “Our visit was not planned,” he said, nodding over at Loki. “This is Sigyn. I found her on Vanaheim and she wanted to come home.”

The lies fell out of his mouth, one after another. Easy. He felt Loki staring at him. “It’s wonderful to meet you,” Brunnhilde said, extending out a hand to Loki and smiling. “You can call me Valkyrie. Everyone here does.”

Loki did not flinch or startle, giving no sign that they burned all of her lost sisters, only smiled widely back and clasped Brunnhilde’s hand. “Thank you for your welcome,” she said.

Brunnhilde nodded, looking back to Thor, those pleasantries finished. He flushed a bit under her attention, the slow rise of her eyebrow. “You’re looking better,” she said, glancing back briefly towards Loki. “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve been doing. But first we should set you up a room, Sigyn.”

“Oh, I’ll be staying with Thor,” Loki said, giving all evidence of looking around the town, only just paying attention to the conversation. Brunnhilde’s eyebrow arched higher. She flashed Thor a grin. Someone on Midgard had taught her to raise a thumb, and she did so.

“Wonderful,” Brunnhilde said. “We’ve actually moved your rooms, since last you were here.” She turned, gesturing Thor along. “I hope that you don’t mind.”

Thor exhaled with relief, happy that he would not need to take Loki into the foul smelling disrepair of his cabin. It had served a purpose for five years, keeping the elements off of him and giving him a place to slowly try to die. He never wanted to go back to it. 

Brunnhilde pointed out places around town as they walked, giving Loki the full tour, before leading them up a clean street to a well-maintained house that Thor had never visited before. Brunnhilde opened the door with a flourish. “You should have everything you need for a few days in here,” she said. 

Thor clasped her shoulder. “Thank you,” he said.

She winked at him, patting him on the chest. “Get some rest,” she said. “You both look like you could use it. Come find me when you’ve slept, though, yeah? It’s been almost two years. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

She marched away with her head high and her shoulders relaxed. Thor let the smile relax off of his face and followed Loki into the house. She’d already moved past the living area, into the kitchen, and up the stairs by the sound of it.

Thor sank down into the couch. It had a faint stiff feel to it, as though it were furniture that did not see much use. He wondered if Brunnhilde had set this house up, just for him. If it had sat empty for… she’d said almost two years. It should not have been that long. A year and a half, perhaps, a few months traveling with the Guardians, a year and a day on the witch’s world, and then he’d come here. 

He frowned, but Loki was coming back down the stairs before he had a chance to pin down the thought. “There’s only one bedroom,” Loki said. “With only one bed.”

“I’m sorry,” Thor said, wincing a bit. “She only--”

Loki waved a hand, running fingers over each of the windows, peering out of them. “She only picked up the implication I left for her. It stopped her from questioning why I was here or what I would be doing with myself.” Loki came to a stop, then, finally. “So, this is New Asgard?”

“It is,” Thor said, and shut his eyes. “All that is left of our people.” He gestured expansively and then let his hands fall heavily down onto the cushions.

“You did well to bring them this far,” Loki said, quietly, unexpectedly, and Thor opened his eyes.

“Please,” he said. “Do not mock me.”

Loki cocked her head to the side, staying well across the room. There was a new caution between them. She said, “I am not mocking you.”

Thor looked away from her expression. It hurt too much to see. “You should rest,” she said, when he offered no reply. “You did not sleep at all in the burned lands or the gray ways.” He nodded. Exhaustion stalked him, making his bones heavy. “Come on,” she said, staring expectantly until he rose, dragged himself up the stairs, and into the bedroom.

He slumped sideways onto the mattress when they reached it, curling sideways, pulling a blanket over himself. “Stay with me,” Thor said. The world was beginning to tip around, to go distant and less painful as sleep wrapped everything in soft, blurring cotton.

“For a while,” Loki agreed, sitting on the side of the mattress. “I will stay for a while.” Thor shut his eyes. His ancestors blessed him for once, and he did not dream.

#

Thor woke to knocking on the door and for a moment did not remember. Those seconds were beautiful, precious gifts that did not last nearly long enough. He blinked and memory returned, along with a dull ache in his head. He scrubbed at his eyes and sat, taking note of the empty room.

A surge of panic woke him the rest of the way quickly. He hurried from the room, finding no sign of Loki in the house, fearing what he would discover when he opened the door. Brunnhilde stood on the other side. She blinked up at him when he yanked the door open, looked him up and down, and asked, “Good morning?”

Thor looked past her, down the street, his thoughts racing away from this conversation, and she said, “If you’re looking for Sigyn, she’s still out fetching your breakfast. I saw her not five minutes ago. She said you were exhausted from showing her around the last few days.” Brunnhilde smirked, then, leaning against the doorframe.

“I--yes,” Thor said, some degree of relief slowing the racing of his pulse, grabbing onto the excuse that Loki had provided. “I showed her around.”

Brunnhilde’s smirk widened. “It must’ve been some show,” she said. “She looked exhausted, too.” The implication in her words hit Thor then, and he frowned.

“No, that’s--we, I didn’t--”

Brunnhilde waved a hand, dismissing his attempts at explanation. “Relax. You’re allowed. And she seems nice. It’s good to see you… showing someone around.” He saw, then, a shuttered worry behind her eyes, a concern that he’d set aside every time he noticed it from her. He did not deserve her concern. Not after all he’d done, all his many failures.

But arguing any further would only draw additional attention to Loki’s presence, so Thor swallowed the sour words in his mouth, and asked only, “What about you? Anyone you’re showing around?”

Brunnhilde laughed at him, then, and said, “One or two of the new arrivals, maybe.” 

She left shortly after with a little spring to her step. Loki stepped around the corner almost immediately after she’d gone, as though waiting for the opportunity. As promised, Loki came bearing breakfast, a basket hung over her arm full of rolls, a few pieces of fruit, and some sausages.

She looked tired, just as Brunnhilde had said, tired and a bit rumpled, as though she’d dressed with uncareful hands. She tossed her hair back as she approached. “Hungry?” she asked.

“No,” Thor said, stepping back so she could enter the house. “I thought--”

“I told you I’d stay with you for a time,” Loki said, depositing the basket on the table and glancing up at him to frown. “You should eat. It’s been days.”

Thor shook his head. Eating still felt like a scattershot proposition. He knew he _should_ , but such physical concerns seemed far away. He shivered when Loki held out an apple, golden and ripe. “Eat,” Loki said, and Thor took the fruit from her and took a bite. “Good. You don’t like being here.”

Thor glanced at her and away. It was…pleasant to have her here, in this place, where he had wanted to bring Loki. But it hurt, just as much as it pleased, each glance a slicing wound that cut yet one more piece from Thor’s battered heart. “No,” he admitted, swallowing around the tightness in his throat. “Not particularly.”

Loki nodded. “Then we should go,” she said, tearing a roll to pieces with her fingers, eating it in fast bites. “You slept for almost three days, and there’s nothing else to see on this world.”

Thor dropped the apple, half-eaten. He felt the hunger in his body, but it was a distant, far away thing, as though experienced by someone else and only described to him. “Do you have a destination in mind?” he asked.

#

“Why did you want to come here?” Thor asked, frowning across their destination. He’d visited the desolate place called Xandar once, with the Guardians, to pick up what had turned out to be a rust-mite infested shipment of weapons. They said it had once been a grand land, but it had not survived well the attentions of Thanos, when he game to take the Infinity Stone held by the Nova Corps.

He’d broken the world before he snapped away half the populace.

“I’ve always wanted to see it,” Loki said, tossing her hair and growing a few inches. He flashed Thor a sharp smile.

Thor watched him pick his way out from the alley where they had landed. “You managed to go to Valhalla,” he said. “Surely you could make it here, if you’d wanted to.”

“I was getting there,” Loki said, shrugging. Thor left the subject go. He did not really and truly care why they were visiting this trash heap. He preferred being surrounded by the other lost souls that made their home in the remains of Xandar than sending time in New Asgard.

Xandar held no memories for him, either good or bad.

Loki made his way through the ruins of the capital city with no rhyme or reason that Thor could discern. They visited a pile of ruins and spent half the day wandering through it, Loki bending to pick up this and that.

A large, ragged man approached them at one point; Thor rested a hand on his axe, and the man kept a respectful distance to say, “Nothing good left in there. S’been picked over for years.”

“Oh?” Loki asked, all evidence of interest in his voice. “That’s a shame.”

“Mm,” the man said, gaze moving from Thor’s axe to Loki and back again, restlessly. “It is, it is. I might know some ruins that aren’t so bare. If you’re interested.”

Loki straightened with a smile, wide and blinding. “That is quite a kind offer,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass it by. I was only looking.”

“Suit yourself,” the man said, nodding and moving off with only a single backwards look.

“We should go,” Thor said, frowning after him.

Loki snorted. “I’m sure that you can dissuade him if he returns to pester us,” he said, and returned to his perusal of the remnants of the records kept by the Nova Corps. 

“You should go get us something to eat,” Loki said, some long hours later, his brow furrowed with thought as he worked. “I know you seem to have developed the ability to go without nourishment, but I have not.”

Thor frowned over at him. “You should come along, then. If anyone comes by…”

Loki glanced up at him, raising an eyebrow. “These are a broken people, Thor. And I can take care of myself.” Thor stared at him, struck by the memory of him hanging from Thanos’s hand - but that had not been _this_ Loki. And Thanos was dead twice over. He swallowed, looking away.

“Very well,” he said. “I will go find us something to eat. You’ll remain here?”

Loki waved a hand, already impatiently refocused on whatever had so captured his attention. Thor tried to keep his shoulders down as he walked away, but a ball of tension grew in them. He disliked leaving Loki alone - the thought occurred that Loki had reason to want to leave - but if he wanted to go, really wanted to, he would. He’d always managed to disappear when he wished.

Settled by that thought, Thor made his way through the market set up now outside the ruins of the city, as the people here worked to rebuild their life. Thanos had devastated them to get the   
Infinity Stone they kept and then snapped away half the surviving population. They did not seem to be reintegrating the returned well.

Thor bought two bowls of food that looked hot and fully cooked from a tired woman who barely looked at him. He stopped again, on the way back, at a stall selling some kind of fluffy concoction made of something that resembled spun clouds.

On a whim, he bought some of that as well. Loki’d always been particularly fond of sweets.

He carried his take back into the old city, delayed by the crowds and the attempts of a few merchants into haggling him into buying goods he did not want. He’d almost convinced himself that the soup smelled good by the time he reached the crumbling hall where he’d left Loki.

The silence from inside struck him first. There is a quiet about buildings that are empty. It reached out to touch him as he stepped through the broken doorway. “Loki?” he called, alarm ringing clarion sharp through his bones.

He got no answer, hurrying forward, calling out again. He’d known Loki might leave. It was hardly unexpected, but--

Thor jerked to a stop at the sight of the first body, a dirty man sprawled flat on his back. He’d bled out from the neck, fast by the look of it. Thor dropped the food, gripping his axe and stalking forward.

He found two other bodies, one pinned to the wall with a jagged protrusion of ice, the other in at least three distinct pieces. Of Loki he found no sign, no sign at all, except a splash of blood beside his pack. Thor lifted the pack with numb fingers. Loki’d killed three men. Who knew how many there had been?

Thor turned on his heel, his throat closed too tight to swear, rushing from the ruins. He found a woman a few blocks away, a child perched on her hip, who shook her head when he demanded if she had seen anyone else exiting the ruins. He moved onward, spreading out his search, panic scorching in veins such as he had not felt, not truly, since he knelt with his wrists bound, watching Thanos choke the life out of his Loki.

Overhead, clouds built a dark tower into the sky.

#

Thor found nothing, no word of where Loki had gone or who had taken him. It did not help that people were moving indoors, breaking up the market, as the storm began to hurl stinging drops of sleet and hail at the planet.

He found nothing, until he almost walked straight into a man stumbling away from a drinking stall. The man stank of alcohol, and Thor would have taken no notice of him, were he not familiar. The man mumbled an apology, turning away from Thor, and Thor grabbed him, jerking him back around. “You,” he said, to the man who had spoken to Loki in the ruins. “I know you.”

“Do you?” the man asked, squinting at him. He’d had a bath by the look of him, and he wore now a fine weapon at his waist, on a belt that looked new, but he was the same man.

“What did you do?” Thor demanded, his thoughts crashing along like the thunder overhead. “Where did you get the coin for this?” He grabbed the weapon, ignoring the man’s protests to yank it off.

People in the street were watching them, Thor knew. He simply didn’t care. The crowd had kept it’s distance thus far, murmuring and watching. They were a beaten people. He did not believe for a moment they would interfere, not even when the man protested, “I don’t know what you’re--”

Thor lifted him bodily and slammed him against the nearest wall - the building shook - the man’s legs kicking off of the ground. Thor bared teeth up to him and snapped, “I am not inclined to waste time prying the information from you. You will answer me or I will kill you. Where is he? The man I was with earlier?”

“I don’t...” The man looked across into Thor’s face, shut his mouth, swallowed, and said, “It wasn’t personal, like.”

Thor’s grip tightened. The man gurgled, and Thor forced his fingers to relax. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, I don’t--we took him to the body market,” the man said, flailing one hand out, towards the ruins. “I knew he’d get a good price, don’t get many that looks as him, and--”

“Slavers?” The man jerked his head up and down, trying to pull at Thor’s fingers. “You sold him to slavers?”

“A strange sort,” the man gasped. His face was turning colors. “Haven’t seen like as them around. Blue skin. Red eyes--”

The horror in Thor’s gut found a way to expand, impossible though he’d thought it. “You sold him to Jotun?”

The man gurgled. “Don’t know, they--they offered so much, that’s--”

Thor bet they had. How well would the Jotun remember Loki? Especially looking at he currently did, almost as he had when he’d caused so much destruction? There were other questions to ask, including how they’d gotten off of Jotunheim, but then, the Aesir were no longer around to enforce their exile.

“How many people know where this body market is?”

The man gaped. He looked fishlike. “Everyone--”

Thor struck him across the face and dropped him, letting him sprawl across the ground, turning. The crowd clustered close drew back, gripping at one another. Thor felt his shoulders heaving, flexing his fingers in and out. “Where is it?” he demanded.

#

The crowd was more than happy to give him directions and hurry him on his way. Thor ran, bringing all possible speed to bear. He found the market deeper in the ruins, on the outskirts of a shipyard which made, Thor supposed, an ugly kind of sense.

There were pins. Full of flat-eyed, miserable people of all shapes and sizes. Thor stopped at the closest, looking at a pink-skinned woman who gathered three children to her at his notice, glaring up at him with large, dark eyes. “I’m looking for blue skinned men. Tall. Red eyes.”

She pulled her children closer. They all of them had flickering bands of energy around their throats, tethered to a machine hooked to the belt of a man who approached Thor, smiling in a way that made Thor want to break all his teeth and shove them down his throat.

Thor extended a hand, lightning jumping to the device. The man cried out as the electricity arched into his flesh. The bands of energy went out. Thor stared at the woman. “Blue skinned men,” he said. “They’d be hard to miss.”

She only stared, but the oldest of the children she held turned to look at Thor. “I saw them,” the girl said. She stretched out a skinny arm, pointing towards the ships. “They went that way.”

Thor’s heart stuttered and tripped. “Did they have a man--like me, but dark-haired?”

The girl nodded as her mother pulled her along, away from this place. All the others behind them were flooding out as well. Somewhere, someone was yelling. Guards, Thor saw, were running up.

He stretched out a hand, smelling burning flesh, but with eyes only for the girl. “How long ago?”

She shook her head. “Not long,” she said. “Thank you.”

Thor could not fathom what she was thanking him for. He stalked into the ships, fully prepared to tear each of their hulls open to find what he sought. In the end, he did not have to take such a drastic step.

Most of the ships had guards posted outside. And Jotun _were_ hard to miss. Thor picked up speed as he saw one, tall, arms crossed, standing sentinel outside of a hulking, ugly transport. He glanced over as Thor approached, eyes widening, moving, suddenly, for the ramp of his ship.

Thor watched the world burn briefly white as he flicked a hand, bringing down a bolt of lightning through the man’s head. The man fell, body smoking, and Thor stalked past him, up into the ship, coming face to face with another Jotun.

The warrior jerked to a stop, staring at him, and Thor snapped, into the humming noise of the ship’s hall, “You’ve taken something of mine. You’ll give him back. Now.” The warrior frowned at him. Thor could sense others at his back. He wondered how many there were and found he did not really care. Thor snarled, “Do not make me ask again.”

The warrior snorted, nodding over Thor’s shoulder, and Thor sent lightning dancing back through the hall without looking, shifting his grip on the axe as he heard bodies hitting the floor, one after another. He took a step forward; the warrior jerked a step backed. “Wait,” the Jotun said. “He will be brought to you. Give us a moment only to--”

“ _Now_.”

The warrior’s expression twisted, but he gestured with a hand to some unseen figure behind him. Thor stood in the corridor, feeling the air pressure continue to plummet as the storm above the city grew and spread, darkening the entirety of the world. The only light came from the flashes of lightning within the black clouds, strifing the world below with illumination.

He tensed at a change in the sounds of the ship. Something dragging across metal. Harsh breathing. A few curses. He took another step forward as two Jotun stepped up behind the one he spoke with, Loki hanging limp between them.

They tossed him forward and he stumbled, tripped, falling to one knee before he surged back to his feet. Thor moved towards him, reaching him in an instant. He was--only barely clothed, covered in shreds of fabric. His skin was blue in places, black and green and purple in others. There were livid purple-red marks around his wrists and ankles.

He kept his head down when Thor grabbed his shoulders, trying to see the full extent of the damage. Thor touched his chin, intending to direct his face up, and Loki flinched, hard, a soft, agonized sound escaping his throat.

Thor ducked, instead, bending enough to see beyond the fall of his hair, to the dark marks across his cheek, the red of one eye, and the thick, ugly thread punched through his lips.

Thor straightened, lifting a hand, unable to hear _anything_ over the cacophony of the thunder above. He would burn them all to the ground. He would--

Loki touched his arm, fingers battered and bloody, pushing down. Thor looked back at him - his face was still turned down - and Loki stepped into him, curling his other arm around Thor’s chest, clinging. He pushed down still on Thor’s arm.

And Thor lowered it. He wrapped an arm around Loki’s shoulders, instead, and holding him carefully, opened the Bifrost.

_eight_

He took Loki back to Midgard. He did not know where else to take him; all of a sudden the galaxy seemed an unfamiliar and untrustworthy place. He landed behind the house in New Asgard, hoping no one would be around. It was close to the dead of night. He heard and saw no one as he ushered Loki through the back down and into the house, dropping his pack, finally remembering how to speak. “Wait,” he said, “right here. I’ll get--”

Loki ignored him, limping towards the stairs, leaving Thor to gape at his back and then follow. Loki braced a hand against the wall as he climbed the stairs, terrible, muted sounds coming from between his lips until Thor, feeling that he would fly apart if he did nothing, lifted him bodily.

They made better time after that.

Loki waved a hand towards the bathing chamber when they reached the top. Thor carried him within and set him on the edge of the tub.

“It’s alright,” Thor said, stumbling over the words, not thinking. “We’ll--clean you up. Just. Sit here. Wait. I’ll bring…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what he needed to brings. Scissors. Bandages. Salves.

He heard the water turn on as he left the room. 

He returned moment later, arms laden, to find steam filling up the room. Loki sat in the tub, face turned up to the falling water, his skin staining red and raising into welts.

Thor cursed, jerking forward and reaching for the temperature. The water did not feel over hot to him, but Loki was not Aesir. “What are you doing?” he demanded, almost reaching to touch some of the red welts, and catching himself at the last moment.

Loki blinked at him, dreamily. The stitching across his mouth had been unfinished. The thread hung down at one side, a bone needle dangling near his collarbone. Thor swallowed back his gorge. “Sh,” he said, though Loki had not spoken and could not, anyway. “Sh, I’ll, I’m going to--”

He gestured. Loki only stared. “Hold still,” Thor said, reaching forward to cup the back of Loki’s head, holding him still and steady. The thread was not _thread_ Thor realized, as he cut his way through, but some kind of sinew, tough and resistant to the blade.

He cut through each stitch, anyway, and made himself pull out the sinew from each wound, as blood ran down through the cold water, painting Loki’s skin and Thor’s hands crimson red. “There,” Thor said, throwing aside the last of the sinew, “there, it’s--”

Loki turned his head and spat, then, blood pouring out of his mouth and something dark and hard, something that steamed and hissed. A coal. Thor braced a hand on the side of the tub, fighting to keep his gorge down, and Loki rasped, “My bag.”

“Yes,” Thor said, standing swiftly. He’d brought Loki’s bag along, leaving it down by the door in his rush. He brought it back. Loki had not moved. He just sat, his legs folded awkwardly, his hands in his lap. His head bowed again. Water dripped off the tips of his hair. The liquid running away from him was mostly red.

“Here it is,” Thor said, holding out the bag. Loki moved, after a long moment, holding out an arm. Thor handed the bag over, watching Loki pull it into the shower, unconcerned with the water falling onto it. He dug around inside, withdrawing a bottle that he uncorked and swallowed all at once.

Thor stood there, clenching and unclenching his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, watching Loki open a can of salve, dipping his fingers into it. “I’m so--tell me how to do that. Let me help you.”

Loki blinked up at him, placed the salve on the edge of the tub, and smeared what he held on his fingers across an ugly, hooked cut on his chest. Thor nodded and knelt. The salve made his fingers feel strange, tingly at first and then numb. He rubbed it carefully across the long raised welts he found on Loki’s back.

“I should have found you sooner,” he said, his voice strangled and hoarse. “I should have kept a better eye, I should have--”

Loki grabbed his wrist, squeezing, and said nothing. Thor swallowed the rest of the words in his throat, tending the injuries without comment. Loki pulled at the remains of his clothes, then, and Thor helped him remove them after a moment of stiff hesitation. There was not much of them to remove.

“Did they--”

“No,” Loki said, the word a croak, but one that sounded less agonized than the last words he had spoken. “No time.”

Thor nodded, swallowing down bitter salvia. “I’m--”

“Don’t,” Loki said, reaching out then to turn off the water. Most of the bleeding had stopped. The wounds closed as Thor watched, flesh turning pink, bruises fading away. Loki sat in the bottom of the tub, staring at the filthy water spiralling the drain.

“Alright,” Thor said, standing, turning to find a towel - there must be towels in this place - and eventually returning with a plush, white towel that looked like it had never been used. Loki chuckled - a strange clicking sound - when Thor bent to wrap it around his shoulders. “You need to rest now,” Thor said, because he did, because if he were resting Thor could go back, could tear every brick out of every wall, pull up the foundations of the very city, blast the world to glass.

Loki did not move. Thor grimaced and worked an arm under his legs, sliding the other behind his shoulders, lifting him. Loki sighed, his head falling to rest on Thor’s shoulder, wet hair cold against Thor’s jaw and neck.

Thor closed his eyes, only for a moment, and turned, carrying him out of the bathing chamber and to the bedroom. The bed looked neat and well-made. It had been comfortable, to the best of Thor’s recollection. He bent carefully, laying Loki across it and, when Loki did not move, pulling the blankets over to cover him.

“Rest,” Thor said, touching Loki’s cheek, his thoughts racing down bloody roads. “Rest, I will be--”

Loki snaked an arm out and grabbed his arm when he made to step back. “Don’t leave me,” Loki said, staring sightlessly forward. Thor opened and shut his mouth. He wanted to protest. He _needed_ to go exorcise this fierce rage in his bones.

Loki rolled, curling onto his side, holding onto Thor’s arm. “Stay,” he said, and Thor swallowed, beaten before the fight began. He eased carefully down onto the bed where he was tugged, and Loki sighed, pushing back against his chest, pulling Thor’s arm around his side.

Thor tightened his hold, automatically, feeling Loki trembling within his skin. “They hated me,” he said, staring sightlessly forward, his face a mess of greens and purples. “Hated me for what he did. I tried to tell them--tried to explain--tried--”

Thor’s chest ached, looking at him. Loki had known such terrible, fierce grief, for all that half his pains he’d brought on himself. He had borne scars and strange hurts unto the day he perished. And Thor had taken his younger self, unexposed to the horrors of the universe, and introduced him to them, one after another.

He said, choked, “Loki--”

“Tell me how you feel about me,” Loki said, shivering still against him, as though he could not be made warm. “About him.”

“I love you,” Thor said, the words tumbling for his lips, fast with relief to be given such clear instruction as to what Loki needed, how to fix this fresh nightmare. Loki shuddered more fiercely, his fingers clenching shut around Thor’s arm. “I love you,” Thor repeated, resisting the urge to kiss his hair, his cheek, his shoulder.

That wasn’t what this Loki wanted from him.

“I love you,” he said. “Rest safely. I will not leave you.”

#

Loki slept fitfully, stirring around in the grip of unhappy dreams throughout the night. Thor managed to sooth him through most of them, unsleeping himself. He could not imagine closing his eyes. He dreaded what he would see if he did.

Eventually, the sun crept through the windows and Thor stirred. Loki did not move, his eyes shut and most of the bruising gone from his face. Thor settled the blankets around him. Loki had been hungry before, he remembered. He must be famished after all he had gone through.

Thor left the room quietly, walking down to the kitchen to see if there was any food. He’d only just begun looking through the refrigerator when there was a knock on the door. He seriously considered not answering it, but shook the thought away, looking down at himself.

He looked… rumpled, but all the blood had been washed away. He scrubbed at his face and walked to the door. Brunnhilde stood outside, smiling at him brightly over a basket. “Hey, there,” she said. “Rumor was you came back late last night. I brought you some breakfast. And enough for Sigyn.”

“Thank you.” Thor took the basket, stepping back into the house when it became obvious she wanted to come in. It was jarring to have her there, to be thrown back into this strange, domestic space his people had made quite without him, with the memory of a broken world and a slave market still so fresh in his head.

He put those thoughts aside, carefully partitioning them off, and carried the food to the kitchen. “Where is she?” Brunnhilde asked, moving to the coffee machine set beside the refrigerator. “Sigyn?”

“Sleeping,” Thor said, and Brunnhilde flashed him a grin.

“I bet,” she said, leaning against the counter. “So, you going to tell me where you were for two years? Or am I going to have to wait for you to disappear and reappear again a few more times before I get any answers?”

Thor sighed, looking through the basket. There were pastries within and some fruit. Sausage. Cheese. Even a bottle of milk that was still cold to the touch. Plenty for Loki to eat. He shrugged, “There is not much to tell you. I traveled with the Guardians.”

“But not for long,” she said, shrugging when he looked up at her. “They stopped by a few times. Nebula and Rocket have people here, you know, on Midgard. Friends they swing by to talk to.”

Thor winced at the chiding, mild though it was. “I found Loki’s body,” he said, by way of apology, and she swore softly.

“How long ago?”

Thor found he did not entirely know. He had spent a year and a day with the witch. But since they’d returned to the current time, he had not paid much attention to the date. He knew more time had passed than he wished in the lands of the dead, but had not bothered with an exact reckoning. “Over a year,” he said.

She poured them both a cup of coffee and came to sit at the table. “You didn’t say anything.”

“No,” he agreed. Because she would have wanted to speak about it. Because she might have tried to convince him not to do everything he’d done since then.

She frowned down into her coffee. “What did you do?”

He sipped at the bitter brew. “Knocked down a mountain,” he said, and she snorted a laugh. “Traveled.”

“Met Sigyn,” she prompted, glancing up at him.

“Yes,” he said, taking another drink.

“She’s good for you,” Brunnhilde said, smiling softly when Thor snapped his head up to look at her. “I mean it. You seem… here, now. For a long time I worried…” She sighed, shaking her head. “You should eat.”

He smothered a frown. It was good advice. He picked up one of the pastries. He had expected, truly, to be picked on for what she assumed was happening with Loki. He remembered his own dismissal of the old, worn out warriors who used to chase young maidens around Asgard, sighing wistfully after a youth that had passed them by.

He felt like one of those old men, his own relative youth be damned. He felt old in his bones.

“Anyway,” Brunnhilde said, finishing her coffee and standing. “I won’t keep you. I’m sure you wish to spend some time with your lady. Tell her I said good morning.”

Thor nodded and saw her out, shutting the door and returning to the kitchen table to sit, arms on the table, head bent forward, until he heard Loki moving about on the stairs. “Is that food?” Loki asked, limping a little across the floor. The bruises had mostly gone. The punctures around his mouth were fading.

“It is,” Thor said, sliding the basket over. Loki hummed and sat, gingerly, setting the food out with careful fingers. He said, after a few moments, halfway through his second pastry, “You’re staring.”

Thor looked away. “Apologies,” he said, because it was pointless to deny it. He stood, and Loki reached out, touching his hand. 

“Thor,” he said, looking down at the table, fingers picking apart the pastry. “I--thank you. For coming for me.”

Thor’s chest ached. He nodded, throat too tight to say anything, and bent to press a brief kiss to the crown of Loki’s head. He heard the shaky little exhalation that escaped Loki’s mouth and said, clearing his throat, “Let me make you coffee. You’ll like it.”

#

They stayed in Midgard for a few days. Loki wanted to see other places, the best the planet had to offer, he said. Thor had never spent much time actually _enjoying_ Midgard, for all his fondness of the place, but it was not hard to get recommendations.

They traveled, visiting different sites, some of which were, it was true, quite beautiful. Loki also wished to visit New York, which Thor would have gladly avoided on his own. But he did not feel up for denying Loki anything, so to New York they went, and in New York they passed the better part of two weeks.

“The Midgardians are recovering well,” Loki said, one evening, late into their stay. He had wanted to stay in some tall hotel in the center of the city, ordering food to eat out on the balcony, overlooking the city so far below. 

Thor nodded, watching him eat and swallowing down some few bites himself that Loki assured him were quite delicious.

“You’re staring again,” Loki said, but how could Thor not, watching him enjoy a meal, his skin shining in the reflected lights of the city before. Thor blinked and looked away, down to the vehicles and people moving about through the busy streets.

“What was it like?” Loki asked, after a short pause, his voice going strange enough to draw Thor’s attention back around. Loki was picking at a platter of noodles and vegetables, eyes resolutely on the dish when he continued, “The first time you took him to bed. What was it like?” 

Thor stared at him, trying to jog suddenly frozen thoughts back into action, remembering, abruptly, that first night on the refugee ship, when Loki had come to his rooms, solid and there, when they had spoken until Loki cast him a sideways smile and said, “Well, I suppose I better find somewhere to sleep.”

And Thor had said, full of adrenaline still from the battle, or pain and grief and fierce victory, all of it loosening his tongue, “You could sleep here.”

Loki had stared at him, unblinking for a moment before his smile stretched. “Are you so ready to give up your berth?” Loki had asked.

The teasing playfulness had swept off of his expression when Thor said, stepping closer to him, close enough to feel the warmth from his body, “No.”

He’d been close enough to watch Loki’s pupils dilate, to hear the catch in his breathing when Thor reached out to touch his jaw. “Thor?” Loki had asked, searching his expression, but not fleeing, not stepping back. 

“Hm?” His fingers had looked battered, over-rough against Loki’s skin. It had not stopped him from tilting Loki’s face upwards, towards him, riding on a surge of emotion that made him forget all the reasons he’d never acted on the wants inside his chest before.

And then Loki had wetted his lips, his gaze dropping to Thor’s mouth, and the rest of the world had gotten small and unimportant.

Thor shook his head, bringing his focus back to the current day, to the balcony, to Loki, studiously focused on a meal he’d stopped eating. “It was…” He cleared his throat. “It was a moment of happiness.”

Loki nodded, still looking down. “And he enjoyed it?”

Thor remembered, sudden and visceral, Loki’s head thrown back, the shaking in his body, the dazed pleasure in his eyes. “Yes,” he said, his voice gone thick, enough so that he watched the tips of Loki’s ears stain red. “Why are you asking me this?”

Loki pushed the noodles around diligently. “The knowledge he gave me,” he said, eventually. “It’s all… unhappy. It is good to know that he found some joy.”

“Not enough,” Thor said, the heat of his thoughts dampened already. 

“Mm,” Loki said, gathering up the food abruptly. “I grow tired of this world,” he said. “We should go somewhere new.”

_nine_

Loki wanted to go to Knowhere, to a handful of other planets Thor had never visited, hither and thither across the galaxy. Perhaps, with the range of their travels, it was not a surprise when they ran into the Guardians.

Thor spotted them across the establishment that Loki had pulled him into - “They have food and dancing,” he’s said, as though that were tempting - as they entered the door, a moment before he saw Nebula’s gaze settle on them. There was no time to get out. There was barely enough time to hiss to Loki, “There are people that saw my Loki coming over here. Right now.”

Loki did not need more warning than that, shifting form before Thor’s eyes. Thor could only be thankful that Loki had been facing away from the door and that the physical change should not have been overly noticeable from the back.

He made himself smile as the Guardians threaded their way over, Rocket in the lead, calling, “Hey there, big guy, look at you, didn’t expect to see you here.”

“It’s a small universe,” Thor said, watching them fold in, pulling up chairs around the table. A haze of blue smoke hung in the air. The music in the place boomed against his ears. He had no idea what Loki liked about it.

“You can say that again,” Rocket said, trying to flag down a server.

“And who’s your friend?” Quill asked, pulling out the chair beside Loki with a wide grin that made Thor abruptly want to punch him in the face. “I’m Starlord,” he said, extending a hand towards Loki. “You can call me Peter.”

Loki shook his hand, looking bemused. “Sigyn,” she said. “You know Thor?”

“Oh, yeah,” Quill said, stroking his thumb across her knuckles. “We go way back. Saved the universe together at least once.”

“And this is Nebula,” Thor said, fighting down a scowl. “Rocket, Groot, Drax, and Mantis. Gamora is not with you still?”

Quill flinched, just noticeably. Nebula shook her head. “She needs her space,” she said. “But she’s well. She keeps in regular contact.” Thor nodded.

“So, you’re another Asgardian?” Quill asked, leaning a little on the table while Rocket argued with the Groot about what it could or could not drink, and Mantis tried to convince Drax to go dance with her. Loki nodded, and Quill smiled wider. “I knew it,” he said, “All of the Asgardians have the whole carved-from-marble, really-hot-god thing going on, but you, you’re setting a new standard.”

Thor sat his cup down too hard, glaring over at Quill, who managed not to be looking at him at all. “And you are partially Midgardian,” Loki said, tilting her head to the side.

“Oh, I’m a bit of this and a bit of that,” Quill said. “There are those that say I’m half a god.”

“Which half?” Loki asked, and Rocket laughed into his drink, disrupting the flow of conversation, blessedly, away from whatever it was Quill was attempting to accomplish.Thor opened his mouth to suggest they leave, but Loki stood then, looking over at the dance floor, and said, “They look like they’re having fun.”

She moved towards where Mantis, at least, did look like she was having fun. It was harder to tell with Drax, who mostly seemed preoccupied with glaring at anyone who came too close to Mantis as she bopped and bounced around. Thor had not even noticed them leaving the table.

Thor stood a half-second after Quill made it out of his seat. Quill patted his shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” He all but skipped over to the dance floor, leaving Thor stunned in the chair. 

Quill caught up with Loki in a moment, putting a hand on her back and leaning down to say something into her ear. She shrugged, turning to face him. Dancing.

Rocket patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She seems like a smart lady. I’m sure she’ll be kneeing him in the balls any second now.” Except Loki was not kneeing him anywhere, or complaining when he placed a hand on her hip, leaning down too close to speak with her once more.

“I am Groot.”

Rocket sighed. “Then go dance.”

Thor flinched when Loki laughed, clear and ringing even over the sound of the music, and looked away. “Please, don’t kill him,” Nebula said, staring at him unblinking. “It might potentially upset my sister, someday.”

#

Thor did not kill anyone, though he had to keep relaxing his hand out of a fist. The dancing went on well into the night and, when it finally, blessedly, came to a stop, it was only for Loki to sway up, steal the last swallow of Thor’s water, and declare, “Peter has invited us back to his ship for the night. Isn’t that nice? We won’t have to find a room.”

Quill rested a hand on Loki’s back. Thor considered how much force it would take to break every bone in each of his fingers. He almost protested, but Loki looked relaxed. Happy. Flushed. He did not like who’d made her so, but...

The _Benatar_ looked much unchanged to Thor’s eyes when they approached it. Quill took the lead, guiding Loki along, chattering about battles the ship had been in, his own inflated importance, and adventures in thievery.

Thor frowned after them as Drax walked past, carrying Mantis, who dozed against his shoulder. “I am Groot,” the Groot said, resting a hand on Thor’s shoulder.

Thor smiled. “And you as well. Is my old cabin still open?” He had a strange, sick feeling that he’d be alone in it through the night. He found his way there without problem. It had been cleaned out, which was a relief. There were neither empty bottles nor the fading smell of vomit within it. It was just empty.

Thor sighed and sank down onto the bunk, leaning back against the wall and scrubbing his face. He told himself to lie down and go to sleep. Loki could do what she wanted, with whoever she wanted. She wasn’t his Loki. She’d promised him nothing. She--

Didn’t know anything about Quill. Thor straightened after some time, standing. He could at least warn her about Quill’s reputation. He stepped out of the cabin and the sound of Loki’s laughter, familiar even in this form, drew Thor through the ship against all his better judgement, into the bridge, where Loki was sitting in the pilot’s seat while Quill leaned over her shoulder, his hands over hers on the controls.

“Hold on, hold on,” she was saying, leaning her head back to blink up at Quill, flushed in her cheeks. “Are you telling me _you_ stole--”

“What are you doing?” Thor ducked through the door, frowning at the way Loki jumped and the scowl Quill sent his way.

“Nothing much,” Quill said, “just showing her the basic operations, you know. Chatting. Having a few drinks.” 

Loki burst into giggles at that, her smile showing all her teeth as she said, “Yes, just a few. A few very good drinks.”

Thor looked from the easiness of her expression back to Quill; the anger rose up too fast to even register. Thor struck him across the face, snarling, “You got her drunk?” even as the force of the blow threw Quill against the side of the ship. He reached down to seize the front of Quill’s jacket, lifting him, and Loki grabbed his arm.

She demanded, sober all of a sudden, “What are you doing? What--put him down!”

All evidence of her laughter had gone, strangled off with the blow. Thor blinked, anger draining away as fast as it had come - it was the first reason she’d had to laugh since he brought her here, and he’d ruined it.

He released Quill - who straightened his jacket, glaring, so perhaps he _was_ really half a god, to take such a blow and remain conscious - and looked away from Loki. “My apologies,” he said, stiff, turning on his heel. “I overreacted.”

“Damn right you did,” Quill said, but Thor was not listening, stalking back through the ship, away from… from whatever Loki was doing.

#

Thor remembered little of reaching his quarters, sitting on the bed, bending to put his elbows on his knees. He was still in that position when the door opened. He did not have to look up to know it was Loki, who hesitated for a moment before stepping into the room.

Loki said, carefully, “I didn’t lay with him.”

Thor’s fists ached. He unlocked his jaw. That was not even what had truly bothered him, but perhaps it was better if Loki thought it was. “It is within your rights--”

Loki made a sharp, frustrated sound, pacing back and forth in front of Thor’s bent head. He did not want to look up at her. “I know that. But I didn’t. I wasn’t even planning to. I just needed to talk to him. I barely even drank anything, not nearly as much as he thought.”

Loki certainly _seemed_ sober now. She’d never drank much, always avoiding drunkenness in a way that Thor could not claim for himself, now or in the past. Thor said, “Good,” staring still at the floor.

She stopped pacing, finally, directly in front of him. “It seems to me,” she said, slowly, “that, despite my first impressions, it is the drinking that upset you.” Thor stared at her feet. They were directly in his field of vision. “You used to try to get me drunk,” she sounded curious. “All the time.”

He felt his cheek twitch, turning his face, shutting his eyes. He _had_. In the past it had almost been a sport, trying to get Loki to join him for a few swallows of mead or wine, enjoying the flush it brought to Loki’s cheeks, the way Loki never really slurred, no matter how much they drank.

Thor put those thoughts away. He said, in answer to the question she had not quite asked him, “I did not eat, or drink, or sleep, for weeks after my Loki died. I mourned, as was proper. And then I struck the head off of the shoulders of the bastard that killed him.” He could still smell Thanos’s blood, if he tried to remember.

“Thor--”

“And then I did little else but drink for five years. From the time I awoke until the time I slept, I drank. Whatever I could get my hands on. I didn’t care. I did not fight, or work, or…” he waved a hand, trying to sketch out the full shape of his failures upon the air. “I was just a drunkard. And the entire time, his body…”

Thor’s throat closed. It took all his concentration to keep the lightning inside his skin, it was far too dangerous to risk a discharge here, in this ship. For a moment, Loki was silent, but only for a moment, before she asked, “His body what?”

Thor’d known she would ask. He bit at his lip, hard, taking some comfort in the pain. “Floated in space. Where I’d left it. I _profaned_ \--” He dragged his hand across his eyes, trying to snuff out the aching agony in his chest and failing. “It was only one more unforgivable failure.”

“No,” Loki said. Thor flinched at her touch, soft, on the top of his head. He looked up at her through blurry eyes, to find her regarding him with more warmth than he deserved. She slid her hand down to cup the side of his face. “Nothing you did was unforgivable.”

Thor wanted to shake his head, did not because he could not bear to lose her touch, undeserved though it was. He barked a laugh. “No, it--”

“He’s forgiven you for it,” Loki interrupted, stealing the words from Thor’s tongue and the breath from his lungs. Thor stared up at her, struck mute, watching her gaze appraisingly across his features. “He’d forgive you anything.”

“How can you know that?” The sound of his voice was loathsome and unfamiliar. Aching. Needy.

The corners of Loki’s mouth lifted in a small, gentle smile. “Because he is still me,” she said, cupping the other side of his face as well and bending to press a kiss against the crown of his head and then, after a beat, his forehead, a soft, cool benediction.

Thor could not help but reaching out, his hands finding her hips. He did not grip hard, but that was as much restraint as he could muster. He tilted his face up. Her hair fell against his cheeks, her thumbs brushed his skin. Her gaze dipped to his mouth, an instant of consideration that knocked the breath out of him all over again.

“Hey,” Quill said, in that moment, striding through the door like he owned the damned ship, “I found another, oh, shit! I’m, you’re, uh, obviously busy. Wow, I thought, I guess I misread--”

Loki had jerked upright with the first word, taking away all the comfort of her touch. She said, “The door was shut.”

“Yeah, it, you’re right, that’s fair, I just thought…” Quill waved a bottle of something through the air. “You seemed like you wanted to, you know--” he made a crude gesture that Thor did not appreciate “--but if you’d rather be in here, with the god of angst, I understand, I’ll just--”

Loki stalked across their quarters as he spoke, shutting the door when she reached it. She kept her back to Thor, afterwards, her hand on the door controls. Thor only managed to stare at her, his thoughts too full of riotous, conflicting wants to form a word, much less a sentence.

“We should leave here,” she said, without looking around. “I grow tired of this ship, and I don’t think there’s anything else I need from Quill.”

Thor swallowed and cleared his throat. “Alright,” he said, far too relieved to protest. “Where would you like to go?”

#

They visited a handful of desolate worlds and the ruins of a great military installation that felt like a maloseum. They walked around the corpses of great war machines, through cavernous barracks, and blood stained halls, all of it picked over.

“Why are we here?” Thor asked, on the second day that they dug through the ruined remnants of Thanos’s empire, swallowing around the constant nausea that threatened to rise in his throat.

“Because I’m curious,” Loki said, looking through star charts and records. “We won’t stay long. I know it’s hard for you to be here.”

It was difficult for Loki to be there, too. His nightmares grew worse on the days they spent in the outpost. He woke up screaming, thrashing against assaults long in the past, clinging to Thor afterwards with fingers hooked like claws, wide-eyed in his dread.

“We should go,” Thor said, the second time he woke up thus, stroking back over his hair, still hearing his screams reverberating off of the walls.

“Not yet,” Loki said, twisting and turning so he was against the wall, so Thor curled around him, a barrier to whatever he saw in the nightmares. Thor kept his axe close, but nothing attacked them; they were left entirely alone, just the two of them, the past, and the dreams.

He exhaled with relief when Loki finally satisfied whatever strange curiosity had taken hold of him and decided they could leave, weeks later. Loki grimaced when they landed on a nearby commerce world, looking down at his body and declaring, “We should get cleaned up. Do you think they have baths here?”

#

They did, as it turned out. There was a woman in town who operated a very well recommended bathing house, known, apparently, for it’s cleanliness and the healthful effects of it’s waters. Thor cared little for rumors of healing water, more interested in removing the filth built up across his skin.

He paid the proprietress, a tall woman with four arms and four winking eyes, and they were led to the bathing chamber. It was a relief to strip off his dirty armor, to clean off his skin, and then to climb into huge bathing area. Steam rose off of the water, along with a faint, floral aroma.

Thor plunged in quickly, avoiding looking over at Loki, busy with his own ablutions. The water was painfully clear, after all. Better not to risk a glance. Just knowing that Loki was nearby, and naked, and soon to be joining him in the water was difficult enough to handle.

Thor picked an area that seemed especially steamy and settled into the relaxing embrace of the water.

Soft music came from somewhere, not loud enough to cover the ripple of the water when Loki stepped in. Thor cracked his eyes, knowing he ought not, and watched him descend into the water.

He looked… beautiful. Different. But Thor was getting used to seeing him young again, used to the absence of scars. He was thinner than he’d been, with the same dark hair low on his stomach leading--

Thor closed his eyes and plunged his head under the water. He stayed there until his lungs burned. Loki sat across from him, on the far side of the baths and the experience was not as relaxing as Thor had hoped. He had to monitor his own reactions too carefully for that. It was a relief when Loki stood not long after, calling, “That’s enough heat for me.”

Thor did not watch him climb out of the baths, waiting until he heard the rustle of towels to rise himself. He kept his mouth shut as he climbed from the pool, grabbing a towel and wrapping it hastily around his waist.

“Feeling better now?” Loki asked, stepping closer in the steam of the bathing house. His hair looked liquid smooth. The heat of the baths had put a flush in his pale skin, and so much of it showed. It was strange to see him thus, to look for scars without finding them. Thor looked away, guilt and desire forming an unpleasant lump in his chest.

He jerked out a curt nod, not trusting his voice, and made to step away, startling at a sudden, cool touch on his shoulder. Loki had reached out, staring at where he touched Thor, fingers sliding in across Thor’s collarbone, down over scars and skin. His eyes were very dark, his lips parted, just a little. “Don’t,” Thor said, his voice gone rough.

Loki glanced up towards his face, blinking. “You look different,” he said, and there was something curious there. He looked down again. Thor felt the weight of his gaze, taking in imperfections. His fingertips slid lower, over a cut of muscle, towards Thor’s stomach, and Thor grabbed his wrist. 

“That’s not a good idea,” Thor said, though a part of him felt it was a very good idea, indeed. He heard the thickness in his words, knew that Loki did when he jerked his gaze up again. There was more color in Loki’s cheeks. 

“Why?” Loki asked, tilting his head to the side, bringing his other hand up, touching Thor’s side, because he had never known when not to push. Thor seized that wrist as well, and, when Loki twisted in his grip, he pushed, driving Loki against the wall, pinning his hands up against the stone near his head, out of the way, where they could not wander.

It brought them close, far too close. He could see Loki’s pupils expand as he loomed, he felt the little stutter in Loki’s breath as Loki’s gaze moved from his eyes, to his mouth, and back. Loki’s pulse raced under his palms.

Thor fought for control and nearly lost the battle. But he managed to squeeze his eyes shut, to turn his face to the side, squeezing tighter at Loki’s wrists without intention, the gasp that it drew hitting him low in the gut. Loki had always liked--

He set that thought aside, smothering it with all he had. Loki had asked him a question. He needed to remember it, to think about that, not the warm closeness of Loki’s body, not how long he had missed, not--

“Because,” he said, his voice telling all his secrets, “I know you are not him, but--”

“But I’m close enough?” Loki asked, curiosity and a bitter snap there, enough to force Thor’s complete attention. There was a small smile on Loki’s mouth, something sharp and unhappy.

“But I loved him still when he was you,” Thor said, and heard Loki’s breath hitch, saw his eyes widen. He looked down, all his better angels shouted down by the want inside his blood. Yes, he had loved Loki even at this age, unscarred and unbroken yet by the universe, all long, pale limbs, elegantly formed in a way Thor had never felt.

Loki said, his voice raspy, “But you didn’t have him then.” Thor glanced back to his face, and he had moved closer without intending it. Their noses brushed. Loki let out a punchy little breath against his mouth, wide-eyed. And Thor knew what arousal looked like on him, would not have had to know it to recognize it when it was writ so large.

“No,” Thor agreed, shifting closer, seeing nothing but welcome on Loki’s face. He had not had Loki when they were both young. There had been too many lies between them, then, and Loki, his Loki, had not wanted him in the same way. His younger self had only yearned, ceaselessly, with unreturned want that he should never have harboured.

But that had not stopped him. The force of it had been too great to deny. He remembered drowning in it, remembered each slow creep of want, razor sharp, and Loki tilted his face up, wetting his mouth, as though he’d looked into Thor’s mind, seen every hungry want, and decided to fulfill them.

Thor released one of his wrists, needing his hand to slid his fingers back into Loki’s hair, to hold him just so, so he could lean forward.

“Your time is up,” the proprietress said, stepping through the door in an unwelcome burst of cool air and light. 

Thor whipped his head around to glare at her, aware only then of the heaviness of his breathing. She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. “And you cannot purchase another hour.” Her gaze shifted towards Loki and Thor shifted, blocking her view automatically. “We don’t allow _that_ here.”

And then she stood there, as though intending to watch to make sure they left. Thor released Loki, a distant part of him impressed with the tenacity of the towels she had provided, which had hung on in the face of great adversity. He called his armor, and she only raised an eyebrow. 

“Feel free to come back,” she said, still smirking. “But you’ll have to buy separate rooms, next time.”

#

They moved on to other planets, most of them unremarkable, until Loki said, finally, “I would like to visit a world called Vormir.”

Thor frowned at him across their breakfast. Loki seemed supremely unconcerned, not even looking up. “Where did you hear of that world?”

Loki cut him a glance, shrugging. “Your friend Nebula mentioned it. It sounds fascinating. Do you know how to get there?”

“I can get us there,” Thor said, ignoring the squirming feeling in his gut. “But it’s a dreary place, I’ve heard.”

Loki hummed, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I’d like to see for myself,” he said, and Thor could only bring himself to nod.

Vormir turned out to be more than dreary. It was a miserable world, predominated by a miserable mountain. Loki insisted on climbing it, all the way to the top, where they found a miserable altar.

Thor looked over the side, to where Gamora had fallen and - in an alternate world - so had Natasha. “I lost a friend here,” he said, quietly. There was no sign of a body or blood on the stone below. It seemed worse, somehow, that there was no sign it had happened. Nebula had told him, once, that she had not been able to find Gamora’s body, after Thor beheaded Thanos.

“How?” Loki asked, wandering over. He had been studying the engravings across the gigantic altar. Thor shook his head, pressing his lips together.

“We won’t have to stay long,” Loki said, touching his arm, soothing, and Thor shivered.

“Take as much time as you like,” he said, turning away from the drop, glad that he would never, at least, have to make _that_ particular sacrifice. If he’d been asked to throw Loki upon the stone for the well-being of the rest of the universe….

He shuddered.

#

They stayed for almost a week upon Vormir, camping out beneath the strange sky, upon the hard ground. They spoke of old stories, ones they both knew, which was a change for them, for most nights.

Loki only once spoke of their current time, splayed across the stone and frowning up at the stars when he asked, “The orbs the witch gave you. How do they work?”

Thor sighed. He did not want to think about how they worked. He was not even sure how long he had left in his year and a day. With all the travel, it was so hard to keep track. “There’s only the one left,” he said. “So I suppose I must show you.”

Loki listened to his explanation still staring up into the sky, and curled up close to him that night. “For the warmth,” he said, though he did not feel the cold, as far as Thor could tell.

Perhaps it was for the nightmares, which only became worse with each passing day. 

“Will you always have them?” Thor asked, the final time Loki woke crying out, his eyes white all the way around.

Loki gulped at the air, fingers digging into Thor’s arms. After a while, his breathing slowed to something reasonable. “I don’t know,” he said, sinking back to the rocky ground. “I don’t think so.”

“Why would he do this to you?” Thor asked, listening to the eerie wind whip through the stone plinths. Thinking about the whys of the nightmares, the intentions of his Loki, helped distract him from the press of this Loki against his body, the way his skin seemed to glow in the pale starlight.

“He had his reasons,” Loki said, and would say nothing else about it. In the morning he declared that he’d finished whatever he was trying to accomplish and requested they return to Midgard, claiming that he missed New Asgard.

_ten_

Thor was getting used to Brunnhilde’s smirking regard. It was better than seeing sorrow in her eyes everytime she looked at him. He endured her good-natured ribbing at their appearance and did not protest overmuch when she invited herself over to eat the evening meal with them on the day they arrived.

He realized his mistake only after she sent him out to gather freshly baked bread and he arrived back to hear her voice floating through the house, as she said, “I’m glad he found you. He was… very unhappy. For a long time.”

“Oh?” Loki asked. They were speaking in the kitchen. Thor was torn between loudly shutting the door so they’d know he’d arrived and standing there to listen to the conversation.

“Mm,” Brunnhilde said. “He’d lost a lot of things. Including someone… very precious to him. I worried…” She blew out an audible sigh, and Thor shut the door, calling a greeting.

Neither one of them looked abashed when he entered the kitchen. The meal passed with no comment about their conversation, and Brunnhilde looked no less relieved to see him over the next few days as they lingered around town.

“I expected you to grow bored of this world,” Thor said, on the third day, watching Loki stare up into the clouds. “You usually do.”

“There’s no time to go anywhere else,” Loki said, still frowning upwards. 

“We have all the time in the world,” Thor countered, and Loki looked back over his shoulder, his mouth thinning down.

“Mm,” he said, and then, “I hear there is dancing in town tonight. We should go.”

#

They went dancing. They spent a day fishing; Loki hated it. They walked out to the bluffs and watched the waves crash against the shore. It was… nice, Thor realized. Restful, after their scattered wandering of the past months. 

It was also infinitely tempting, spending such easy time with Loki. Thor found himself staring out of the corners of his eyes, watching the fall of Loki’s hair, the way he laughed, the way his body moved. He wanted and knew he shouldn’t, sending himself out for dinner one evening if only to get a bit of breathing space.

He returned to their home to find the downstairs empty and quiet. For a moment, quiet panic thrummed in his veins, but Loki answered when he called, bidding him to come up the stairs. Thor dropped the food he’d went out for onto the table, ascending the stairs.

He found Loki pacing fitfully in the bedroom, the sheet off of the bed wrapped around his shoulders, his hair loose - grown inches longer in their time together - and a frown on his mouth. His feet were bare and he startled when Thor walked through the door.

“There you are,” Thor said. “What are you doing in here? Is everything--”

His words dried up when Loki stopped pacing and, all at once, dropped the sheet.

He was naked beneath it, all smooth bare skin, miles and miles of it, his hands clenched by his sides for an instant before he flexed them and, with a look of purpose, took a step towards Thor. Thor took a step back, some meagre measure of sense fighting it’s way to the forefront of his thoughts; Loki did not look _happy_ , not in his expression or the set of his shoulders.

Thor bumped into the doorframe, and Loki was there, then, stepping up to him, raising a hand to his face. Thor put hands on his body, muscle memory nearly taking over, and held him back, gently, instead of pulling him forward. “Wait,” he managed to say, around the plunge of his blood southward, the dumb hunger sparked to life inside him. “Wait, what are you doing?”

Loki squirmed under his hands - gods - and said, “What does it look like? Why are you--I know you want me.” He sounded, for a moment, plantitive and frustrated. There was no heat in his voice. All his muscles felt tense under Thor’s hands.

“Not unwillingly,” Thor said, the only words he could think to say. “I have _never_ wanted that.” The thought was shockingly sour enough to do away with the heat in his blood, even with Loki naked and so close. Another terrible consideration flooded through him and he flinched. “If I made you think that you had to--”

Loki twisted away from him, then, dragging fingers back through his hair to snap, “No. That’s--don’t do that. Don’t start feeling guilty again.” He bent stiffly and grabbed the sheet, thankfully wrapping it around his body again.

Thor relaxed enough to start breathing. “That’s--good.” He did not know how to move forward in the moment. “Then why?”

Loki grimaced and sat heavily on the corner of the bed. When he glanced up, he looked young, so young that it hurt in the center of Thor’s chest. He said, carefully, “I’d like it to be you.”

Thor stared. “You’d like what to be me?”

Loki glanced to the side, mouth thinning, and gestured at his body and the bed. “That’s--it doesn’t have to be anyone,” Thor said, considering seriously running from the room before his better intentions lost the fight with the heat in his gut. 

“It does. It will be,” Loki said, looking towards him, something haunted in his eyes. “I’m remembering more. Not just in nightmares. I--I know what it was like, for him, the first time, and I don’t--I don’t want it to be that way, for me.”

Thor gripped at the door frame. Loki - his Loki - had never spoken about previous lovers, previous sexual encounters of any kind. But he _had_ been jumpy, slower with his pleasure than Thor would have expected. Thor had not been blind to the fact that there was something there, something in the past, some unnamed source of pain.

“Who--”

“You don’t want to know,” Loki snapped and then barked a little laugh, twisting his hands together. “I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t--” He shook whatever thoughts were in his head away, locking his gaze back onto Thor. “But you love me. I want--I want that.”

Thor’s ribs bit at his lungs. He said, “You don’t love me.” And yet he asked for this, asked with a quiet desperation on each edge of his expression. “Not… in this way.”

Loki stared, unblinking. “I will.”

This was not the conversation Thor thought he was going to have this morning. It was not a conversation he’d ever thought they would have. He said, shaking his head, “I--Loki--”

Loki stood before him then, moving through the empty space, grabbing one of his arms. “You would have spared him what happened, if you could? Wouldn’t you? But you can’t spare him over. It already _happened_ to him. It hasn’t happened yet to me. Please.” He touched Thor’s cheek, dropping the blanket again, keeping his chin high. “ _Please_.”

And Thor had never been able to deny him anything. Denying him this felt cruel, beyond cruel. It was Thor’s fault he knew what was coming, Thor’s fault the dread of the moment would live with him. And what if Thor refused? He could just go find… someone else. Perhaps Thor’s younger self, who had been a fool and would not have handled the situation with the care it deserved, who had been a selfish lover.

Thor swallowed, reaching out to brush Loki’s hair back. “You can wait,” he said, softly, watching the quicksilver slide of emotions in Loki’s eyes.

“No, I can’t,” Loki said, and pushed up onto his toes, and kissed him. It was a bad kiss, hard and unyielding, stiff. Thor eased him back, feeling the tension in him, and cupping his cheek. He leaned down more slowly, watching Loki stare, and kissed him softly, carefully, the first kiss he deserved.

It took long moments for Loki to relax into it, for him to move his arms, instead of holding them stiff, for him to make a soft, gasping sound, all surprise and want. Thor drew him closer then, kissed him more deeply, full of sweet pleasure and pain all at once, to be touching what was lost to him, tasting it once more.

“The bed?” Loki gasped, when Thor nuzzled back against his jaw. His hands gripped at Thor’s shoulders, scrambling against the shirt he wore.

“We’ll get there,” Thor promised, kissing _right_ where it made Loki arch against him, gasping. He could feel all the emotions in his chest tangling, forming into a knot that would need unraveling, but that would have to be later, later, after Loki was no longer pushing urgently against his hip.

Thor did not take him as he’d wanted to, when he had been young. He had been a fool and an ass. And he did not take him as he had his own Loki, who met him hunger for hunger, after a few brief hesitations.

Thor took him to the bed and took him apart, as gently and carefully and thoroughly as he knew how, leaving Loki gasping at the last, limp across the sheets with his fingers knotted in the short strands of Thor’s hair. Thor kissed his hip, softly, missing the scar that would someday live there, and started to sit up.

Loki snagged his arm, his skin flushed and his eyes hazy, his mouth bitten red. “Where are you going?”

Thor shrugged, and felt foolish for it. He reached over for the blankets still on the bed, intending to cover Loki’s body. “You--it’s--I’m going to the bathing chamber.” He’d given Loki what he asked for, he would not presume to take more than that. His hand would serve well enough.

He shifted up, and Loki sat, pulling on his arm. “No,” he said, “I thought you understood.”

Thor stared, feeling as though he understood very little, watching Loki flush red across his cheeks and down his neck. Loki tugged on him again. “I want… I need - I would have you take me. Here. Now.”

He looked debauched already, naked and flushed, with his hair a tangle, sinking his teeth into his lip, not quite looking Thor in the face. And it was one thing to touch him, to bring him pleasure without an expectation of taking any in return. But. Thor froze.

“Thor,” Loki said, winding an arm around his neck, kissing him, and Thor could not help but kiss back, amazed at how quickly Loki learned. But he should not have been surprised. “Thor,” Loki said, pulling him back down to the mattress, so that Thor sprawled against him. “Please,” Loki said, sliding a hand down, bold, and squeezing.

Thor shuddered, and whatever resistance lived within him still broke and fell away in shreds. He’d _wanted_ for so long, and to feel Loki arching up against him again, wanting him--

He tore his shirt removing it, tossing the scraps of fabric to the side, shifting over Loki to kiss him properly. He went slowly. Carefully. Loki was--new to this. Brand new, and, and the same and different, all at once. Thor’s chest ached with each comparison that rose into his thoughts. He tried to set them aside, but it was impossible, even as Loki danced fingertips across his shoulders and his scars, fingers clenching when Thor touched him just right, just like Thor knew he liked best.

His Loki had not thrown his head back and shuddered all over at the first push of Thor into his body, nor blurted, “Wait, wait--hold on.”

Thor stilled, one of Loki’s legs hooked over his arm, his hands planted against the mattress near Loki’s shoulders. Muscles in his stomach and back jumped - it had been _years_ since he’d gotten this close to anyone - his body wanted. But he’d learned control, if nothing else, over the years.

“We don’t have to--” he started, his voice a thick, low rumble that made Loki gasp and grip at his arm. 

“I want you to,” Loki shifted a little and gasped. “Just--just give me a moment.” Thor turned his face to press his cheek against Loki’s hand, listening to the rapid in-and-out punch of Loki’s breath as he adjusted to the feeling. Thor’s Loki had been the only lover he ever took who had not seemed overly impressed or intimidated by the prospect of taking him.

He wondered why, now, what had been done that his Loki barely saw the need to slow down, to--

“Alright,” Loki said, nodding on the sheets, blinking rapidly, wetting his mouth. “That’s, more, I can, you can move.”

Thor set aside the noise in his head, focusing. He moved slowly, carefully, pausing each time Loki’s breathing grew too sharp, until there was no space separating them, until Loki stared up at him, eyes wide and unblinking, murmuring, “Ah, that’s--that’s, I--” A little furrow formed between Loki’s brows. “It’s--I’m not sure I--everyone makes it sound--”

Thor smiled down at him, struck suddenly with such fondness that he could barely stand it. “You are not impressed?” he asked, shifting with the question, holding his weight with one hand and using the other to change the angle of Loki’s hips.

“That’s not--it’s not--I always thought people must be exaggerating, and--Thor!”

Thor enjoyed watching the way his express fell open the first time Thor shifted back and pushed forward into him once more, all his muscles remembering just how to do it. He set an easy rhythm, gentle. Loki flailed out, anyway, fingers scrambling across Thor’s skin and clenching into the blankets as his back arched.

“What are--Thor!” His Loki had not cried out so, quieter in his pleasure. But they flushed the same way, turning red all across their pale skin, eyes going distant as they fell into the pleasure inside their skin.

“I’ve got you,” Thor told him, and proved it, keeping each movement controlled and steady, until Loki trembled and shook and fell apart below him. Thor stilled as Loki collapsed back against the sheets, covered in a sheen of sweat, his hair stuck to his cheeks.

Thor stared at him as he lay in repose, his mouth soft and his eyes half-shut. His Loki had looked the same way afterwards, every time, as though taken so off his guard by release that all his walls came down. It was a sweet torture to see the expression again.

Thor closed his eyes and looked away, carefully easing his arm from beneath Loki’s leg, making to shift back.

He did not expect Loki to cry out, rising up off the bed to throw an arm around his neck, shifting Thor deeper within him, and crying out again at the feeling. He panted against Thor’s mouth, the long muscles in his back trembling, and demanded, “ _Where_ are you going?”

“I--” it was incredibly difficult to think while holding Loki so, his own pleasure still delayed. “I was going to go--”

Loki kissed him, then, gripping the back of his head. “I _don’t want you to go_ ,” he snapped, words panted against Thor’s mouth. “Stop trying to be noble! Lay me down on the bed! You say you love me! Show me!”

To be yelled at while Loki squirmed around, attempting - without overmuch success - to raise and lower himself, proved more than Thor could bear. He groaned and tumbled them back to the mattress, swallowing the victorious, gloating sound Loki made. He curled over, hips moving now of their own volition, driving delicious little noises from Loki’s mouth constantly.

Loki kissed him, messy and open-mouthed, arms wound around Thor’s shoulders, body bent nearly in half, until he slurred, “Oh, I’m…”

“Yes,” Thor said, shifting the angle again, daring to go a little harder, a little faster. Pressure built down his spine, sweet heat coiled in his gut. He worked a hand down, between them, and Loki cried out against his mouth, cries growing louder when he spilled and Thor kept moving, each quake and quiver of his body pulling Thor closer.

He found his release with a crack of thunder so loud it rattled the walls, stretching on and on. Loki laughed, sharp and abrupt, against his mouth, and Thor huffed, abashed, pushing up.

Loki tightened his grip, holding Thor in place, his laughter fading away all at once. They stayed there, clinging tightly to one another, and then Loki shifted, kissing his cheek gently, nuzzling against Thor’s jaw and murmuring, “Thank you.”

Thor squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in the smell of his skin and sweat, for a moment transported back in time. Something burned inside his chest. He jerked a nod, unable to find his voice, and eased back. This time, Loki did not try to drag him back.

Thor could not get his breath under control. He grabbed a blanket, unseeing, pulling it carefully over Loki, bending to kiss Loki’s forehead as spots swam across his vision. He managed to walk out of the room with muscle memory alone, down to the bathing chamber, where he managed to shut the door. He bent over, grabbing the sink, breathing sharp and shaky until the sharp agony inside his ribs finally went away enough for him to lean over and splash water across his face.

#

Thor left the bathing chamber, eventually. He felt strange, almost wrapped in clouds inside his head as he walked through the rooms, away from the bedroom. He sat on a couch in the main area, leaned over, put his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands.

He heard, after a moment, footsteps down the hall. “Thor?” Loki asked. Thor glanced sideways at him. He was dressed again, fiddling with the edges of his sleeves as he entered the room. He sat across from Thor, moving with deliberate care as he sat. Thor squeezed shut his eyes.

“I hurt you,” Loki said, after a long moment. 

Thor shook his head, pressing his fingertips hard against his scalp. “No,” he said, because all the pain he felt was self-inflicted, no matter how he looked at it. “No--just. I brought you here to bring back my Loki…” He trailed off, tasting ash in his mouth. He’d strayed far off that path, he’d--

“No, you didn’t,” Loki said, calm and sure as steel, cutting through the winding tangle of Thor’s thoughts like the edge of a knife. Thor opened his eyes and looked up. Loki sat directly across from him, curled up into the corner of the chair, resting his head on one hand, staring.

“What?” Thor frowned. “Yes, I--”

“It’s alright, Thor,” Loki said, one side of his mouth lifting, almost imperceptibly. “You don’t need to lie to yourself about it anymore. We don’t have anymore time for that. Our year and a day are up.”

Thor found himself bracing, his heart rate picking up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I didn’t intend to--I wasn’t trying to,” he gestured between them, “I would have _never_ \--”

Loki waved a hand. “I know. You didn’t bring me here for the future. You brought me here for the past.” Thor’s breath caught in the back of his throat. He could not inhale or exhale. 

“No,” Thor said. His voice sounded strange even to his own ears, as though he were shouting to be heard from a great distance and yet not quite managing to be heard. He felt unbalanced, as though the world moved beneath his feet. His vision blurred and his cheeks were wet.

He could not get rid of the image of Loki -- _his_ Loki -- standing before the golden doors of great hall in Valhalla, watching him walk away with no expression on his face save perhaps the imagined glimmer of grief. Loki raised an eyebrow and asked, “No what?”

Thor stared at the bleary vision of him, so close to what he should have been, what Thor _wanted_ him to be, and so far away in the same instant, tall and trim and dark. “No, I only wanted you to bring him back. But we couldn’t. You told me from the beginning and I--”

Loki made a brief, dismissive noise. “Of course we can. And you know that,” he said.

Thor found his mouth hanging open. He managed to shut it after a moment. His chest ached. He said, “No, there’s no way. You both agreed.”

Loki waved his free hand. “There’s no way to return the dead to life, that’s true. I can still accomplish the task you asked of me. I’ll just have to make sure they don’t die in the first place.”

The vice around Thor’s ribs squeezed tighter still. He looked at the darkness of Loki’s eyes, the smile on his mouth. “You can’t alter the future,” he said, hoarsely. “There’s no way of knowing what would happen, what worse fates you might create. That’s not what I wanted--”

“Yes, it is,” Loki said, smiling wider, and his tone was mild for all that his eyes flashed sharp and narrowed. For a moment, just a second, he looked tired and familiar. But that washed away, a trick of the light, taking away all the scant cares on his face, returning him to a smooth faced youth only barely a man.

“No,” Thor denied, in a croak.

“Yes,” Loki said, cocking his head to the side. “It is what you’ve wanted all along. It is why you showed me how to do it, it’s why you took such care to make me see the necessity. It is why you have ferried me around the universe for months so I could gather information and knowledge. It is why you came to _me_ in the first place, Thor, when you could have visited Odin, or Frigga, or a dozen sorcerers with more power. You came to me because you _knew_ I’d do it for you.”

Denial sat on Thor’s tongue like a burning coal, unable to be spoken or swallowed fully back. The words stung, striking like a lance. He flinched, shifting his gaze, and knew it was as good as an admission, to himself as much as Loki.

“And I will,” Loki said, speaking into the thick silence. Thor clenched his jaw shut and his eyes closed, knowing that the right thing to do would be to protest, to make him understand that he could not, to think of the risks… “I will do what you need done. I will put it all to rights for you.”

Thor dragged in a breath. His throat did not want to work. He rasped, a strangled word, “Why?”

Loki stared at him, unblinking, and then a flush crept up his cheeks and he looked aside abruptly. He raised a hand to brush his fingertips across his forehead, where Thor’s Loki had touched him. “For the same reason he died for you. For the same reason you came to me, and asked for all of this to be done.”

Bands tightened around Thor’s chest, squeezing his ribs against his lungs and heart. “Loki--”

“And now it’s time for you to give me the final orb so that I can go back. Or I won’t want to leave. And that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Or your Loki. Or my Thor.”

Thor closed his eyes, warring with the wild surges of emotion in his chest. He wanted to protest and scream, but it would have been for show, and the lance of relief through him told him that. Loki had spoken the words and somehow made them truth, or revealed the truth Thor had thought he’d hidden so well.

He reached into the pouch by his waist, closing his fingers on the last orb- she had known, he realized, all along, a year, she’d told him, and four orbs she’d given him - and placed it on the table in front of him, eyes still shut.

He did not want to watch Loki leave.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice thick and choked. He did not know how to properly thank Loki for taking on this burden, for knowing what he wanted, for… for all he had done. The words felt woefully insufficient.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Loki said, and when Thor looked up, alarmed by the strange tone of his voice, it was to meet a fast, vicious blow. Thor blocked the first strike, startled. Loki could not match his strength. Especially at this age.

 

But Loki had always been clever. Even at this age, and Thor gasped in shocking agony as a blade slid between his ribs and up. He choked, meaning the sound to be a cry, and Loki caught him, arms around him and lowering him to the ground.

Thor gaped up at him around the cold pain of it. Loki had stabbed him before, oh, so many times. But never had he aimed for true. He had always found spaces that healed with little issue, that avoided every organ, artery, and vein.

This blade had struck true, and yet he sank down to the ground with Thor, shushing him softly, taking hold of Thor’s axe - not grand enough for a name - and bringing it to Thor’s chest, putting Thor’s fingers around the haft of it, his expression open and sad. Thor managed to gargle, “Why?”

Loki smiled down at him, then, a pained smile as he forced Thor’s fingers to hold the weapon. “I don’t know what will happen to you,” he said, his fingers cool over Thor’s, cool and steady. “After I go. But I can guess. There is not a happy future written for you. Not here. There is only grief and pain and a slow fading away. Not fitting for one such as you, my love.”

Thor blinked, trying to focus on the spinning world, trying to make sense of Loki’s words and having little luck. Loki blinked rapidly, his eyes shining as his smile trembled. “But not this way,” he said. “This way you will go to Valhalla. You’ll be with… the other one. He is owed his repayment, after all.”

Thor could not look away from him. The rest of the world seemed to have gone away, anyway, along with the pain. There was only the circle of Loki’s arms, and the axe in his grip, and, in the distance, the sound of horns and the smell of a sweet summer day.

He managed to lift one hand away from the axe, his hand weaving before he settled it against Loki’s pale cheek. He curled his fingers into Loki’s hair, tugging with what strength he had, and Loki made a soft, injured sound, bending down to him.

Loki kissed him, soft and careful, as though now afraid of injuring him further. Thor kept his eyes open, wanted to see the fall of Loki’s eyelashes, clumped and wet, wanted to be in this moment forever, wanted…

“Sh, sh,” Loki said, against his mouth, kissing his cheek, then, and the bridge of his nose, and his forehead, holding him close.

Thor let out the last breath in his ribs, whispering, “Thank you,” and followed the horns and the scent of familiar flowers, leaving whatever else would come to pass in Loki’s hands.

#

Thor became aware of sunshine on his face, warm and clear, and a breeze soothing the heat away. He heard horns and the cries of seabirds. He opened his eyes to a blue sky, to mountains in the distance, blue and green with rich woods, to a white-capped sea beyond.

He wore his armor but something seemed different about the weight in his hand. He looked down the length of his arm in a strange daze, and found Mjolnir firmly in his grip, felt it like kick to the center of his chest.

He looked back up, blinking his eyes against the stinging. He stood on a road that ran straight and true to a golden longhouse, one he’d seen in every one of his dreams for the past months.

A single dark figure sat on the steps, rising as Thor watched, an apple tumbling from his fingers. Thor laughed, the sound shredded and punched out of his lungs, and leapt into the air as Loki took first one step forward, then another, and broke finally into a run.

Thor landed before him, dust swirling around him as he swept Loki close, cupping his face, kissing him desperately as the perfect sun shone overhead, and the seabirds cried, and somewhere, somewhere, the horns sounded, calling him home.

_coda_

Thor woke up slowly, with the vague sense that he was being watched. He cracked his eye open, stretching on the soft blankets, and found Loki already awake beside him, propped up on one elbow and gazing down upon him, expression thoughtful and too sharp by far for the barely-dawn light coming through the windows.

Thor grumbled, “You’re thinking loudly enough to wake the dead.”

Loki snorted, some strange amusement passing across his features, there and gone. “I suppose I am,” he said, reaching out the card his fingers back through Thor’s nearly shortened hair. Thor had not, quite, gotten used to being shorn. It felt strange without the weight of his hair across his scalp, stranger, still, to be missing an eye.

He placed that thought to the side, focusing instead of the cool slide of Loki’s fingers and the press of his body under the blankets, pleasantly chilled in the mid-summer heat. He still got a thrill for it, this closeness, bought sorely as it had been in the long war with Thanos, raged across the stars when Loki caught word of the Titan’s mad plans for the universe.

Thor sat that thought aside as well. Thanos lay buried beneath the ruin of his empire. In the end, he had not caused nearly the damage as their furious sister. He could only be grateful they’d had time to spirit most of the populace off of Asgard before Odin’s health finally failed….

“Now who’s thinking loudly?” Loki asked, amusement in his tone as he dragged his fingernails against Thor’s scalp, just enough to fully capture his attention.

“Perhaps it’s a contemplative morning,” Thor said, dancing his own fingers up Loki’s side, enjoying the shiver it drew from his flesh. “I was thinking of how we came to be here, on Midgard. What’s caught your attention so early this morning?”

Loki hummed, his cheek leaning against his shoulder. He said, gaze flitting across Thor’s features, “You remind me of someone.”

Thor frowned. It was not the answer he’d expected, nor one he particularly found enjoyable as they lay in their bed. “Who?”

Loki shook his head, a smile dancing across his mouth. “Don’t frown so. I will tell you about him someday,” but he said it in a tone that Thor knew very well meant he never would, that the thoughts would stay locked up, somewhere behind his eyes with all the rest of his secrets.

Thor had long ago given up ferreting them out. Besides, the morning had turned from slow contemplation as he traced his fingers further down Loki’s body and around to his stomach, watching Loki’s eyes darken as he sucked in a sharp little breath. Except Loki rolled away from him then, towards the edge of the bed, saying over his shoulders, “Besides, today we are celebrating.”

“Oh?” Thor asked, stretching over to snag him back with an arm around his waist. Loki put up no fight, smirking as Thor hauled him across. Loki fitted well over his thighs, leaning one elbow on Thor’s shoulder and grinning. “What are we celebrating?”

“My outrageous successes,” Loki said, his smile now flashing in his eyes.

Thor laughed, pleased to see him in such high spirits. There had been days, especially after Hela’s return, when it seemed neither of them would smile again. Even beyond that, Loki had grown strangely serious so often as they aged, finding a focus Thor would not have anticipated in their youth in the destruction of Thanos.

He shook those thoughts aside, rolling them both to dump Loki back onto the mattress, following him down and nuzzling in for a kiss. “Let us begin the celebrations here,” he said, hooking an arm under one of Loki’s legs, swallowing the little pleased noise Loki made as their bodies slid together.

Loki was still wet from the previous evening. Wet and ready and, all at once, so was Thor. He kissed back along Loki’s jaw, aligning their bodies. “What would I do without you?”

Loki’s expression did something strange, just for a moment, before it went hazy once more. “Oh,” Loki panted, against his mouth, “I’m sure you’d be fine.”

Thor hummed, sinking into him, finding that perfect pleasure he got nowhere else, kissing his mouth and back along his jaw. “No,” he said, listening to Loki breathe. “I don’t see how I would be.” Loki cried out, sharp and sweet, as birdsong filtered in around them, and the world turned, unconcerned with their pocket of warmth.

END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the choiceless hope in grief](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20908439) by [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic)




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